


The Inertia Job

by androsjanicek



Category: Leverage
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Eliot Spencer-centric, Eliot Spencer/OC - Freeform, Gender Exploration, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, OT3 implied, Other, Queer Character, internalized oppression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28845198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/androsjanicek/pseuds/androsjanicek
Summary: Eliot is injured and disappears from the hospital. His recovery forces him to face his demons. As he looks back at his life, his story starts to make sense in a new way. Alec receives a mysterious message telling him where Eliot is. When they meet again, Eliot has begun to discover a new kind of peace.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

The last time Alec and Parker saw Eliot, they didn’t recognize him. It was a job like any other, they consoled themselves over and over again. Any one of a hundred variables that Eliot had managed effortlessly in the past slipped this time. There was just one guy too many.

Their hitter was so badly injured that he was unconscious, his head plastered with matted hair and blood. Even if he had been alert, he wouldn’t have been able to speak. Several bones in his face were broken. His features were so bruised and swollen that the person in the neck brace being wheeled away could have been any unlucky recipient of a savage beating.

The identity Hardison furnished when they rushed through admitting was flawless. Erwin Johnson had the best insurance available, and Alice, his sister, was listed as medical proxy. There should have been no question of who to contact if medical decisions needed to be made. Not that they expected things to get to that point. 

Eliot looked bad, but the last word from the doctor was that the brain scan didn’t indicate any catastrophic injury. Soon, their hitter would wake up and start being a bad patient who refused pain meds, disconnected tubes, and was generally a stubborn pain in the ass. Eliot would still be Eliot.

Hardison and Parker finally went home to get some sleep. 

The next day, they went back to find that Eliot was gone.

“Gone? Why would he leave without telling us?” Parker asked, biting her lip.

“Damn that man!” Hardison swore. “Can’t admit when he needs help. How did y’all let him walk out of here? Don’t you have someone watching to see if an assault victim tries to sneak out AMA?”

The nurse’s expression was carefully neutral. 

“Mr. Johnson is no longer a patient here. Even if he were, he changed his health proxy information. I wouldn’t be able to disclose anything about his condition to anyone, family or not,” she said to Parker with finality.

After trying to argue for a few minutes, Alec let himself be pulled away by Parker. She was quiet and upset, so he let her go on ahead to get fresh air. He stopped at a vending machine to scratch his itch for soda. It was his only way to rebel against the Eliot who thought so little of his friends that he left without any word.

A nursing assistant stepped up behind him while he was feeding money into the machine. “Your brother-in-law didn’t walk out on his own,” she said in a low voice. “It’s happened a few times since I’ve been here. I’d deny it if you told anyone, but sometimes someone who’s really sick gets transferred somewhere else by ambulance instead of being admitted for surgery. Except it’s always a private company, not regular EMTs.”

Alec stepped back with his soda and casually took a swig while she made her own purchase.

“Who are these other people?”

“I always assumed that they’re VIPs. No one has ever had family members come looking for them like you.” Her eyes scanned his and then she turned away. “I wish I could tell you more. He did seem to be in competent hands.”

Alec watched her head down the hall and then turned to follow Parker out of the hospital.

“What do you mean, you can’t find him?” Parker said the next day. “I thought you were all ‘I’m the best hacker there is’?”

It wasn’t like her to snap at him, but Alec didn’t blame her. He felt like snapping at himself. The one time they really needed super skills, and his were coming up woefully short. 

“I’ve been up for almost 36 hours, mama, maybe if I get some rest it will make more sense to me tomorrow,” he said, rubbing his face tiredly. “The only good thing I can think is that if the hospital has seen this kind of thing before, chances are some terrorist group or foreign power didn’t kidnap Eliot. It’s gotta be the military, or at least some government entity.”

“And like they don’t ever do shady things,” she pointed out. 

He sighed mournfully and rested his head on the desk. 

“I’m sorry, Alec,” she rubbed his shoulders. “I’ve never seen Eliot look that bad, and it’s even worse that we can’t see how he’s doing. I didn’t even get to say I was sorry.”

He jerked his head up. “That’s not on you, baby, any more than it’s on me. We all promised each other that trust meant no one person would take the blame if something went wrong.” He got to his feet. “Lemme lie down for a little while. Sometimes a problem pieces itself together in my head when I step away.”

He let Parker lead him to the bedroom. He slept for 12 hours straight. 

Hardison wore himself out over the next few weeks, but all he determined was that no one in any underworld he could access had an active hit out on Eliot. He contacted everyone that Eliot had ever mentioned from any era of his past, white hat, black hat, or some shade of gray, and no one knew anything. He even applied some subtle but undeniable pressure to some of the military types, hinting about some skeletons he’d discovered in their closets and casually saying that it would be a shame if anyone else were to find out.

Some of these were really juicy secrets, but no one ever had any concrete information to offer.

Most of the time, Alec felt like if information was digitally recorded in some format, then it was fair game. However, Eliot’s past was something different. The hitter hadn’t explicitly forbidden Hardison from finding out all the darkness in his past. But it was obvious that the man was trying to get over some serious shit, and Alec didn’t feel like it was his place to open all that up just out of curiosity. And he knew all too well that his poker face was terrible—Alec wouldn’t be able to hide the look in his eyes after finding out the horrific things Eliot had seen or done.

Now, he cursed his scruples as he started tracing Eliot’s past in earnest for the first time. Alec tried to hack into government databases to determine exactly what Eliot’s relationship to the military and/or security services might have been, but he found absolutely nothing useful. The hacker hadn’t really expected to—whatever Eliot had been doing for the government had been the kind of black ops that no one wanted to admit to. Still, he reasoned that if they had left their friend alone all these years, especially during the time when Eliot was engaging in freelance violence that he never specified, then he must be on some kind of “hands-off” list reserved for people who could reveal some serious dirt about the government.

“He was hurt really bad, honey. Maybe he didn’t want us to see him laid up and taking a long time to heal,” he told Parker one night while they sat on the roof. Now that it was just the two of them, he was accompanying her to the high places or confined spaces that she associated with safety in an effort to comfort her while she tried to come to terms with Eliot’s absence.

“Why does he have to be this way?” she asked, sniffling. “We did it the way you said, we let him take his time and decide what he wanted to be to us. But he never really let us in, and now Eliot is gone before we could steal him away from his—his ‘grrr’ and his ‘humph’” Her hands wheeled around as she tried to approximate Eliot’s angry growl and semi-affectionate grumble. “We should have done it my way.”

“Woman, I’m not going to tackle a man built like that and try to drag him to the bed, and I didn’t want you to get hurt doing it, either,” he interjected. “Nobody sneaks up on Eliot Spencer who wants to live to tell the tale. Besides, he was either going to let us in, or he wasn’t. You can’t thieve, hack, or dynamite your way inside somebody who’s built walls ten feet thick to keep people out.”

With no clues to Eliot’s whereabouts forthcoming, he started researching the injuries that they’d learned about before the hospital refused to talk to them. One blow to the side of his face, in particular, made a sickening crack over the comms. Even if Eliot needed some kind of reconstructive surgery, he wouldn’t need more than a couple of months to get better, surely. 

In his darkest moments, Alec worried that Eliot’s injuries were so severe that he didn’t want them to see some kind of permanent damage. It would hurt them to see Eliot that badly injured, but they would get over it. They missed him.

In time, they found other hitters to rely on for jobs, but they never contracted any one person on a permanent basis. It felt too much like replacing Eliot, and nothing could do that. 

“If he was hurt so bad that he had to retire, we would still want him,” Parker said one night when they were rehearsing all of the things they wished they could have told their friend. “It was never about what he did for us. He could do anything or nothing, as long as he did it with us sometimes.”

“I know, sweetheart. But Eliot is stubborn. He takes things to heart and then swallows them so deep that maybe he can’t find them. If he had some fool idea like he would be a burden to us if he couldn’t hit, we might not be able to pry that thought out with a crowbar.”

Over time, they stopped talking about him because it hurt too much. Everything associated with Eliot was packed away into one of Parker’s warehouses and they tried to fill their friend's absence with hard work.

Three years went by. Alec never stopped looking, but he didn’t let the search for the vanished Eliot consume him, if only for Parker’s sake. They weren’t the best three years they spent together, but there were many good things about that time. 

That only became clear after he lost Parker.

There was nothing wrong with the ropes. That was always his fear, but a snapped lead wasn’t what did it. They’d checked her rigging together before the job because they were training a new thief. Parker was explaining her preferred harness system to the young woman whom they were considering adding to the team.

It was the thief’s first job with them. Unfortunately, she wasn’t nearly as confident about rappelling off a tall building as she had let on. 

The young woman panicked and let out her rope too fast. Parker followed down quickly to try and help her. The thief was flailing as she fell, even though she should have known the harness would keep her from hitting the ground. She knocked into Parker and sent the more experienced thief careening to the side. 

Parker struck a balcony and that was it. Alec had to scramble to the roof and snatch at the ropes until he figured out how to pull her back. When he had her back on flat ground, it was clear that she was already gone.

Alec sat alone in the apartment above the brew pub. No one needed him. They had a good Leverage crew that could rely on a rotating list of thieves in the absence of a permanent replacement. The pub ran itself, though with considerably less good taste than when Eliot was there. 

He spent days staring at the wall, his vast mental mechanism gone eerily still. 

Then one day, Alec decided that he had to figure out something to do or he’d become a shut-in, and neither of his vanished teammates would want that for him. He sat in front of one of his computers and idly checked his email.

Hardison sat up straight. The message from a nondescript address bore the subject line, “Sorry for your loss.”

“We were sorry to hear about the death of your partner,” the email said without identifying who “we” referred to. “We have instructions in case of this possibility. Please reply if you would prefer to pass on the news of her loss in person. Otherwise, we will communicate with the concerned party.”

Hardison used every trick in the book, but he could find out nothing about the origin of the email. The digital tracks were untraceable. That, in itself, told him about the likely origin of the message. 

With shaking hands, he wrote back. “I want to tell him. Does he know to expect me?”

An address appeared in his inbox with no further explanation.


	2. Chapter 2

Alec got off the plane in North Carolina and drove a rental car to Chapel Hill. He didn’t remember any mention of the Carolinas from conversations with Eliot, but him relocating to somewhere in the South sounded better than Eliot holed up in some desolate failed state, hitting for hire. What little Hardison knew about Eliot’s past was a hodgepodge of vaguely mentioned war zones, spy hot spots, and rural dead ends. Hardison was aware that Eliot knew Tokyo, for instance, because he’d been the one to navigate the city when the team was in Japan. Alec heard him mention Berlin, Kuwait, Islamabad, Mogadishu, and the open country outside Mobile, Alabama. A college town in the south? As good a place as any to spend three years away from the people going out of their mind missing you.

Alec took a deep breath as he parked the car in a nondescript neighborhood on the other side of the trendy area close to the university. He had a lot of pent-up hurt about Eliot abandoning them, but he was about to break some really bad news. Hopefully, there would be time for him to talk about why Eliot left and never got in touch. But it wasn’t right to kick his old friend right after telling him that Parker was gone. Whatever the reason he’d stayed away, Hardison didn’t think that it was because Eliot stopped caring about them. He must have cared about something else more.

He stood outside the long, two-story brick building. The top floor had wide windows that corresponded to the martial arts studio advertised outside. From the vantage point of the street, he could see the students kicking and jumping in unison. That made sense. The ground floor didn’t have any identification. Also probably made sense. If the military was the entity that contacted him, this might be some kind of secure site hidden in the middle of a business district. Eliot’s cover was probably a martial arts instructor.

Hardison went inside and was confronted with a shabby interior and an office separated from the door by a plexiglass shield. A few camera feeds were displayed on a monitor. “May I help you?” the receptionist asked. She was sporting more tattoos and piercings than he would expect from an intelligence analyst, but what did he know about the people who worked at unnamed government agencies?

“I’m here to see Eliot Spencer,” he said, the name feeling unfamiliar in his mouth. He’d tried figuring out Eliot’s identity in Chapel Hill but came up short. He actually had no idea what name his old friend might be using, but that seemed a good place to start.

She scowled at him and pressed a button on the phone. “Chef there?” she asked.

“Yeah, somewhere,” a voice said over the clattering sounds of a busy kitchen.

“Someone’s here looking for Eliot,” the receptionist said with an emphasis he couldn’t place.

Some more kitchen noises came out of the phone for a few long minutes. Alec looked around. A couple of young people, late teens, early twenties, were buzzed in while he waited. Finally, a voice shouted, “All right, send them in.”

The door buzzed and Alec walked through it. “Wait there. Someone will come and show you the way,” the receptionist said in the same unfriendly tone.

A young man in a white cook’s jacket and apron came to the front, wiping his hands. “Hi, I’m Joe,” he said. “You know Chef from way back?”

“Pretty far back,” Alec said, relaxing a little as he started piecing Eliot’s present together. There were inspirational posters on the walls as they walked down the hall and past rooms where young people were working on art projects or sitting in groups talking. This was some kind of community center, and Eliot was teaching cooking to at-risk youth. Hardison was glad that his old friend found something meaningful to do with his life, even as he felt hurt that this was what Eliot preferred to being with him and Parker. Two people passed them pushing a cart full of food containers. He tried to make small talk with Eliot’s student. “If you’re learning the art of food from him, you’re working with the best.”

The young man glanced at him as they stopped at a door. “El’s a good teacher,” the young man said after a moment. “In here.”

They entered the din of a busy kitchen. No one working there was older than 25, and some were in their early teens. “Where’s Chef?” Alec’s guide shouted over the noise.

“They’re in the back taking inventory,” someone called over their shoulder as they passed by with a stack of clean pans.

Alec tensed. If there was some cooking class going on, he couldn’t very well give Eliot the bad news. “I have something personal to talk about with him,” Hardison said, following the young man to the back room. “It would be better if we spoke alone.”

His guide stopped at a door. “They’re in the storeroom,” he said. The young man stood watching as Alec walked through rows of shelves towards a light at the back. Alec reached the doorway and looked back to see the young man’s anxious eyes on him.

Alec turned into an alcove set up like an office and saw Eliot’s familiar back, a long braid between his shoulder blades. He looked around but only his old friend seemed to be there. “Hang on,” Hardison heard over his pounding heart as Eliot finished entering something on a tablet. 

“Eliot,” Alec faltered. “It’s good to see you, man.”

Eliot turned around. 

Alec’s mouth dropped open. He’d prepared himself for Eliot’s face being scarred, maybe looking slightly different after healing from the beating. But what he saw was something else entirely. 

Eliot let himself be examined as if he expected the scrutiny. He stood there with the device in his hands while Alec tried to recognize his old friend within the new features. 

It was definitely Eliot, but his face looked very different. His features were more defined and he looked thinner, younger. The effect made him look like someone else. There were no surgical scars, his brain was telling him, meaning that whoever came to claim the hitter from the hospital must have been invested in his wellbeing enough to give him the best care available. But Alec couldn’t understand why, if the reconstructive surgery was obviously skillful, Eliot looked so different. If the hitter wanted to hide his identity, this face was an odd choice.

Eliot had always been a handsome man—Alec was immediately attracted to him even before he fell for his teammate. But now he looked—beautiful was almost the right word, but he didn’t look feminine, exactly. It was as though his inherent good looks had been set free from some of their previous tough-guy, square-jawed setting, and now he looked free-form gorgeous. Alec was reminded of some high-fashion ads he’d seen, Benetton or something, where you couldn’t tell the model’s gender exactly but they were hot by any definition. The person standing before him was intimidatingly harmonious.

The androgynous features were set off by a whole series of earrings, hoops and studs in various sizes, running all the way around Eliot’s ears. He had a stud in his nose, which was finer than the one Alec remembered. The bracelets, rings, and necklaces weren’t much different than the jewelry Eliot used to wear, though there were more of them.

His old friend looked smaller in every way, actually. Gone were the heavy biceps and muscled forearms that used to make the man seem like he was taking up more space than the average person of his height. Eliot still looked fit, and he stood there with something very much like his old grace betraying a strength that could come uncoiled at any minute. 

Much like before, he was wearing a couple shirts underneath the chef’s coat covered by an apron. Alec could see some tattoos peeking out from the rolled-up sleeves. That, more than anything, brought him up short. Eliot, like other professional criminals, had always avoided adding easily recognizable body art that could be tracked by Interpol’s tattoo database.

The blue eyes followed his to the tattoos. “It’s henna,” came the voice that was familiar enough to bring tears to Hardison’s eyes, and yet light and friendly in a way that chilled him to the bone. “I’m still toying with the idea of making permanent changes. Tattoos are a commitment, but I’m getting there.”

The new face looked at Alec with what might be sympathy. “Sit down. I knew when they described who was waiting at the front. If it was you alone, and they gave you the address, something must have happened to Parker.”

A sob came out of Alec’s throat and he collapsed into the old chair next to the desk. He choked out the story that he hadn’t been able to share in its entirety with anyone, keeping his head in his hands so he didn’t have to look at his changed friend.

He felt a glass pressed against his hand. “Don’t tell anyone. Lots of people are in recovery here. I hide wine for a few recipes.” 

Alec looked up through his tears and took the glass. He gulped down the cooking wine and sat there, panting, staring at the walls covered in posters, many of them with rainbow flags in various tones.

“Please look at me as much as you want. It’s better than you trying not to,” Eliot said. 

“Eliot—” Alec began.

“El,” his old friend corrected.

“El,” Alec began again. “I really need a friend. There’s no one else who understands, who knew her, knew what we had. But now I see I don’t know you anymore.” He took a breath. “I don’t know where to start. Whatever you want to tell me, I’ll listen. I won’t ask any questions. You know I never did. But please don’t shut me out.” His voice broke. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“I thought about calling, so many times,” El said, taking a drink of wine and leaning against the desk. “It would have been easy to go back, but that way was closed to me now.” He reached for Alec’s hand and knocked it against his head. “Metal plate. I’m fine as long as I don’t get one more blow to the head. The doctors put the fear of God in me about fighting.

“At first, going without it was like drying out after an addiction that had been destroying me for years. I didn’t trust myself to go back. As soon as I saw you and Parker, I would have thrown myself in between you and danger like before. It took me a long time to find something worth living for. Even if I couldn’t find it, I knew you didn’t deserve to watch me die like I would have within a week.”

“We never needed that from you Eli- El,” Alec burst out, some of his pent-up hurt coming through his voice. “We wanted you, however you needed to be. If this is you,” his hand encompassed all of the physical changes, “That’s fine. All we ever wanted was for you to let us in. We would have loved to really know you. Why didn’t you tell us about this?”

“I wasn’t keeping anything from you,” El snapped with something like his own defensiveness. Then he stopped. “I’m older’n you, Alec. When I was coming up, there weren’t words like ‘nonbinary.’ Not where I came from, anyway.”

The use of the word “they” suddenly made sense to Alec. “Shit, El, we didn’t know you at all,” he said sadly, thinking of the mythology of macho Eliot Spencer that he’d believed as the gospel truth. 

“You can’t tell me you didn’t pick up on anything,” the soft voice said in some new riff on the old “Dammit, Hardison” tone. “The long hair? The jewelry? It wasn’t standard issue for someone from a military background. I didn’t exactly fit the mold of the other hitters you met.”

Alec threw up his hands. “You were Eliot Spencer, legendary badass. So, you had your own style. Parker and me, we wanted you, any part of you that you had to share. You know that, right? That we loved you?” He felt a weight begin to ease off his chest after voicing the desire that he and Parker had carefully held back for fear of pushing El away. “One of the reasons I never said anything was that I didn’t think you were into dudes. I guess I was stupid.”

“Maybe I’m not. You can’t tell that by someone’s face,” El said with an edge to their voice. They took a deep breath. “Let’s get out of here. My culinary students cook food for local businesses and the shelter where some of the kids live. It’s pretty good, but you know I’m better. My place is close by.”

El took off the apron and laid the chef’s jacket across the back of a chair. Minus those couple of layers, their body looked a lot thinner than before. This was not someone who could fight off the bad guys and keep him safe. Alec felt a sense of loss that this rock he’d relied on had shifted. Then he mastered his reaction. He didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing and have all those brick walls rise up between him and the only true sort-of friend he had left.

Their hair came out of the braid. El shook their head as they combed out the waves with their fingers. “Now that I’m trying to live honest, seemed stupid to keep hiding the texture of my hair at this point,” they said with a small smile. “I don’t own a hair dryer anymore. It’s so much easier not having to blow it straight or keep a hat on till it’s mashed flat. Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”

“Sure, I was in your bathroom. I knew you used some serious product to keep your hair from curling like it did when you it got wet,” Alec said following them out. 

They walked through the kitchen, where things had calmed down. The young apprentices stiffened as Alec walked past. “Everything good, Chef?” the young man who led Alec to the office asked.

“Sure. We’re going to grab a bite to eat. See y’all on Monday,” El said easily.

Alec followed his old friend three blocks to a humble brick building above a bookstore. “It’s not fancy, but you can’t beat the commute,” El said, letting them in the front door and then punching the button for a rickety elevator.

They got off on the top floor and El unlocked several locks. Several cameras were trained on the door and the hallway. “Still safety-conscious,” Alec observed lamely. 

“Take a seat,” El said, gesturing to the kitchen table. They went to another room and came back wearing a sleeveless tunic over a pair of narrow pants, both made out of some fine, dark material that might be linen. Two inked arm bands snaked around the slim upper arms.

“I’m pretty confident that most facial recognition software wouldn’t find me, but you’re the only person from my past I don’t mind coming through the door,” El said, pulling pans out of the cupboard and opening the refrigerator. “I have to rely on that barrier now that I can’t fight myself safe.” They gestured to the fridge shelves. “I have real wine, and beer.”

“Beer’s good,” Alec said, keeping his eyes down as he accepted the bottle.

“Look at me,” El half-shouted. 

Alec allowed himself to stare. The clingy material showed that the person in front of him was almost painfully thin, fragile. It was like looking at a wasted limb that had shriveled due to some unnatural process. 

They had what might be called a gymnast’s body—powerful but small. Not unlike Parker’s really. At that thought, Alec’s eyes began to water.

“I ain’t dead,” El hurled at him. “See, I wasn’t wrong to stay away.”

“It’s not that,” Alec caught the wrist as his host turned towards the stove. “You make me think of—her. She was small and strong and—” he broke down again.

El huffed. It called up memories of the old Eliot. Alec began crying in earnest. He was so confused. He wanted to yell at El for leaving him alone to deal with Parker’s absence but he didn’t feel that this was even the same person that he had been missing all these years. He felt cheated of the chance to yell at that man.

“El, man, I mean, they, you,” Alec spluttered. “This is a lot and honestly, it makes it hard for me to give you the earful you’ve had coming to you for three years. You almost killed us, leaving without a word.”

“I had things to do, and no one could do them for me,” El said quietly. Their bracelets tinkled as they chopped vegetables. “I’m a vegan, these days, so you’re eatin’ healthy if you’re stayin’.”

“Of course, I—damn, El, you don’t get it!” Alec shot to his feet. “All of this—” his hands waved up and down, “It’s new, I won’t lie, but we thought you might look different. You were hurt bad. We thought you were afraid to show us.”

“It took many surgeries to give me a face again,” El said over their shoulder. “It was worse than you could imagine. Phantom of the Opera bad. Except getting my face bashed in ended up being the best thing that ever happened, really. A push to start making some changes that needed to happen.”

They set some greens on the table in front of Alec. “Here. Chop. You still remember how I taught you?”

“Believe it or not, we cooked some of your recipes,” Alec said, taking up the knife. “We never were any good, but missing you made us not exist on frozen food and takeout.”

El’s lips curved in a real smile, the first relaxed expression Hardison had seen. “I’m glad you didn’t just eat trash. I worried about that.”

Alec chopped the vegetables El set in front of him and listened to the bubbling and sizzling sounds that loosed some knot that he’d been carrying around all this time. “Sounds like home,” he ventured. 

El’s shoulders tensed. “Part of the deal was that I was starting over, really over,” they said. “They gave me a new last name, new social security number, a free pass at a new life.”

They measured out a few handfuls of some kind of green pasta. “Without going into too much detail, you know I was a vet. I could have gotten medical care from the VA at any time by just showing up and giving a number. But having a certain—classification—from a couple chapters in my past gave me access to the best medical care available. You sell your soul to the government, and it gives you an all-access pass to certain benefits. I never wanted to use it because I was making my own way, trying to be a new person after being a lot of people I didn’t like.”

“How'd they find you?” Alec asked. 

“There’s a network that keeps track of people like me,” El said, chuckling ruefully. “If one of us gets hurt bad enough that regular medicine isn’t likely to serve them well, they contact us and make an offer. My hand still worked enough to sign the consent forms, and that was that. It would have been a long recovery and probably a lot of scars with regular medical care. The physical therapy wouldn’t have been near as good. I might have not gotten healthy again, and you know what that would have been like for me.”

“At some point, you were well enough to reach out,” Alec lashed out. “You don’t give us enough credit. What? You think we’re some kind of ‘phobes who couldn’t handle you changing? I’m not like that, and Parker, she saw people for who they were.”

El grabbed the cutting board and tipped the vegetables into the hot oil. “I thought about it,” they said. “You’ve got to understand, transforming like this, you never feel like you’re done. I was never sure if I was where I wanted to be, or moving in a direction I couldn’t see yet. I wanted to be sure before I returned to my old life. It’s tough having to face people you knew before. And honestly,” they pushed their hair behind their ear, “It was nice not having a past. You can’t understand what it meant to finally feel like I left Eliot Spencer behind. He was a lot to carry.”

Now that Alec felt free to look, he went and stood near the stove to watch El cook. “You seem—young. And happy,” he said, tipping his host’s face toward his.

El blushed and swatted his hand away with a spatula. “I keep busy teaching aikido as well as the cooking. Upstairs, I’m ‘Sensei.’ Downstairs, I’m ‘Chef.’" They twisted their mouth wryly. “The doctors told me I needed to find an identity outside of a job, but I never was very good at that. I like being a function. It’s a hell of a lot easier than figuring out who I am, and then if I can live with whatever I find.”

“You’ve created a good life for yourself, El. I wish you could someday learn how to give yourself some credit.”

El sighed. “I didn’t do that much. Fell into it, like I every other goddamn thing I ever did. The martial arts studio was there before. A friend from the treatment center knew I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself, and they suggested I teach a couple classes. The place was barely getting by—another vet had started it and then got lost at the bottom of a bottle running away from his demons. When I took over the place, I was still doing a few outpatient reconstructive procedures. The plan was to try and attract some young kids when I was sure I wouldn’t scare them.” 

They glanced at Alec. “It was rough there for a while. I didn’t know what I was going to look like, and at first all I cared about was looking normal. Luckily one of the doctors who got my case had someone talk to me about who I wanted to be, not just what I used to look like. She helped me make some good decisions at a time when I could have gone a different route. I would have really regretted going through all that pain only to end up some piss-poor version of the man I couldn’t wait to leave behind.” 

They turned to face Hardison. “I think I actually recognize the person I see in the mirror for the first time. It’s taken a lot of meditation, a lot of training. And believe it or not, the military does treat its trans service members well, though I’m the only nonbinary one I’ve met so far.”

“So this youth center wasn’t here before?” Alec asked. “It looks like a well-established place.”

“It’s an old building that’s had a lot of other uses. The last owner was a church group.”

They scooped out the noodles and vegetables onto two plates and ladled some sauce on top. The plates joined the salad bowls on the table. El topped off their wine glass and brought Alec another beer.

“Like I was saying, I was going to teach martial arts to kids. It’s kind of a college crowd here, but there are professors and such that could have brought their kids in after school. Things weren’t going so well and I was just thinking of hanging it up and going overseas when there was a rash of assaults in the area.” 

Alec saw a familiar controlled rage in the blue eyes across the table. 

“Female students being attacked. I put up some signs offering self-defense classes for a nominal fee. The young women started coming. And then somehow the queer community passed the word that someone who might be one of their own was giving classes. I started listening to the kind of violence these kids had come from in their families, in the community, and it all took off from there.”

They ate in silence for a moment. Alec leaned back and closed his eyes. 

“What, Hardison?” El said and then they smiled at one another. The impatience was familiar.

“This food is amazing,” Alec said. “It’s not just that we, I, got used to whatever we could throw together. This tastes like you. I missed you, El.”

El looked up shyly. The face that was still a confusing mixture of the familiar and the uncharted reddened. 

“You always had beautiful eyes,” Alec said. “I could pick them out anywhere. Even if you don’t look constantly pissed off anymore.”

El burst out laughing. “For a while, I felt like I was going out of the house without my pants or some other essential piece of clothing. It felt so weird to not be looking over my shoulder for the next threat, to not be guilty and angry and everything I accepted as ‘self’ for so long.”

The meal continued. They talked about El’s community center, started with accounts that they were smug about keeping from Alec. Alec talked about Leverage, about the brew pub. They argued about the current state of the menu and some of the more exotic beers Alec had created. 

When the dishes were done, El moved them over to the small living room and put some Johnny Cash on the turntable. Alec turned over the album cover and grunted. “Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian,” he read.

“What? I still know good music when I hear it, even if you can’t appreciate it,” El sniped. 

Alec gestured to the guitar in the corner. “You playing a lot these days?”

“Sometimes,” El said. “Just for me, or when the kids have a music night. I’m still not comfortable with performing at open mics or anything.” They tucked their feet on the couch and swung the long, wavy hair over their shoulder, a few strands of beads woven in clinking against each other. “I stay mostly in the same circle of people, so it’s easy to feel comfortable. I really can’t get in any fights, and that’s a possibility with the way I look now. It’s not great, feeling like I can’t defend myself no matter how good my aikido is. Parker would be proud—I carry a taser.”

Alec winced. “Why North Carolina? You could move to New York or somewhere and not worry as much.”

“There are a few places they send people, but the Research Triangle had the best doctors for the surgery I needed,” El said, shrugging his shoulders. “One thing led to another and I put down roots. New York wouldn’t need a place like this as badly as a southern city does. North Carolina is better than South Carolina, and the Carolinas are better’n Mississippi or your average backwater town in the South or Midwest. But there are a lot of homeless queer kids. The way they look at me, Hardison,” they shook their head sadly. 

“Maybe I’ve come to depend on the way they need an adult like me. I kick their asses when they need it, and they think I’m only sad because the world made it hard to be me. It’s honestly wonderful to not have people know the kind of person I am inside. I don’t correct their impression because they need inspiration and care from adults too much, and I need them to see me that way.”

El considered the bottle they’d brought with them and poured another glass of wine. “I don’t drink that much. My whole deal is hard work, meditation, training, cooking.” They played with one of the beaded strands of braids. “I’ve locked everything painful so far away that I’m going to get a little drunk and try and find it. Will you stay? I need to miss Parker, but I’m so good at being Zen that I’ve forgotten how to really feel.”

Alec nodded, sipping at his beer. They reminisced about Parker for a while, and then El began giving some context for what brought them to where they were now. It was surreal to be talking to the former Eliot Spencer minus all the walls. He listened while El talked about their upbringing for the first time. “I was real good at being what my dad wanted, and then all I wanted to do was do the opposite. Football team, riding horses, fixing cars. Hell, I still like that stuff. I volunteer at a horse farm outside the city sometimes, helping out with kids who go there for therapy.” 

“So you didn’t know—” Alec prompted. He still wasn’t sure the right words to use.

“I knew I was different, but there were a lot of things about my small town and my family that didn’t sit right. I tried growing out my hair once and my dad took a razor to my head while I was asleep. Sat on me until it was buzzed off. Then there was one guy I was messing around with. We were really careful. No one knew.”

Alec nodded, trying not to betray his reaction. He and Parker never had any evidence that Eliot was into guys, though of course he’d hoped. 

“One day the kid stopped talking to me. My dad did something to scare him off. Looking back, he must have seen that I was happy and that was a big enough change to make him suspicious. He had to get me back in line. Growing up without my mom, all he had to give me was discipline. But I didn’t realize how much those two incidents meant to me. I liked girls. A lot. I still do.”

“So you date—”

“Not really, no. There’s some people in the queer community who don’t get hung up on gender, but you’d be surprised at how stratified the gay community is. Those guys are not interested. I’ve gotten more hate to my face from them than anyone else, really.” He chuckled. “Used to be I could walk into a gay bar and walk out with my choice of guys. I didn’t realize I was taking myself out of the dating pool when I stopped looking like a square side of beef on a plank. A couple of lesbians seemed interested until they found out more.”

“You’re an interesting person. Coming from me, that means something. You look healthy and, and intimidatingly hot.” El grimaced. “Have you been afraid to date because a couple of dudes and ladies in a gay bar gave you flak?”

“Not exactly. I haven’t really found anyone that made me want to take a risk.” They continued hurriedly. “I’m not lonely. Sometimes I get sick of all the talking I have to do.”

“Is it with the computer over there currently missing a hard drive?” Alec shook his head. “I’ve been staring right at it, waiting for you to admit you’re afraid of me snooping on you. You must have taken it out when we first got here.” 

El patted their pocket. “You’ve gotta understand, someone like you could follow the data trail to secrets that’re not mine to keep. The doctors set me up with some—specialized online support groups that have to be completely secure or nobody would go. One is for people to talk about their gender identity, and the other, well, let’s say that the talk ain’t near as pleasant on that channel.”

Alec shuddered involuntarily at the thought of ex-assassins baring their souls. 

“Glad you have someone you can talk about all that with,” he said. “That must be why you look about 100 pounds lighter, and I’m not referring to your actual weight.” 

El lifted his arms as if recalling their old heft. “With all the surgery and the beating I took, I wasn’t exercising like I used to. I had some nerve damage in my arms and the PT was intense. I could’ve built back up my muscle mass to something like it was, but I’m not a hitter anymore. I train for strength, yeah, but it’s more like I swim, do yoga. I want to move well, not sling around a lethal weapon.”

“How much do you weigh?” Hardison couldn’t resist asking, though he didn’t know exactly what Eliot had weighed before.

“Not sure. At least 21 grams.”


	3. Chapter 3

Eliot was having a bad dream. As a sixteen-year-old, he was used to intense dreams, but they were usually of another variety. He felt a tremendous weight pressing on him and an ominous buzzing sound. His lungs ached for more air. He tried clawing his way out from under it, but he couldn’t move his arms. He shouted in desperation and then flinched awake at the sound of his own voice. 

“Shut your fool mouth, boy,” his father said from his current seat on top of him. “Sit still and it’ll be over quicker.”

Eliot struggled against the clippers shearing off his hair, but his dad was a big, broad man who had made an art form out of inertia. Wherever Bud Spencer planted himself, you weren’t likely to uproot him, no matter if you spent a couple decades digging at him with a shovel.

“No son of mine is gonna look like no ‘slacker,’” his father said, joining in the general hand-wringing over the shiftless youth of the 90s who would never make anything of themselves. “When you get dressed for church today, you’ll make yourself look like someone going into the house of God, not a groupie at one of those long-haired idiot rock concerts kids like these days.”

He usually tried to ignore his father’s determination to halt the world in its tracks, which didn’t take much in their slow-moving backwater Oklahoma town. But the clippers were biting at his scalp as a tactile expression of the elder Spencer’s nagging words, and he took the unusual step of talking back. “If you’re thinking of Nirvana, that’s grunge, not rock, and I don’t listen to them anyway.”

Bud turned off the clippers, his task done, but he didn't move. “I better not catch you listening to them. They had a picture of them on the news, a bunch of guys wearing dresses. I raised you better’n that.”

With that, his father got up and watched Eliot brush the hair off his neck and survey the locks strewn across his sheets. He’d not put much thought into his hair. At that time, a lot of guys wore it long, some really long. It was a small rebellion. 

Eliot had absorbed everything his father had to teach him, which was mostly how to handle a football, a horse, or a hammer. He was a good son because it was easier that way, and also the best way to get some privacy. He established himself as a trustworthy worker at his family’s hardware store so that he would be allowed to use the old pickup truck to make deliveries. “If you can keep that thing running, you can drive it,” was the rule. It was easier said than done, but he learned enough about the workings of old engines to have the freedom of a social life away from his father’s watchful eyes.

Mostly, that meant cruising the main strip on Saturday night and sneaking back home before church. The only thing good about being raised by his dad after his mother passed was that his father didn’t even make him hide the fact that he drank beer. It was understood that he might mess around with girls. As long as he didn’t get anyone pregnant and showed up in a shirt and tie in one of the pews at First Bethany Baptist every Sunday, Eliot pretty much looked after himself the rest of the week. 

“It wasn’t that long,” Eliot said as he tipped the hair onto the floor and got up to look in the mirror at his close-cropped head. 

“A man’s hair is too long when Eleanor Jenkins tells me she has women coming into her salon asking to have their hair waved and styled like yours.” Bud’s face was red with either anger or embarrassment. “’Just like Bette Davis when she had her hair in a bob,’ Eleanor said.”

Eliot spluttered at the inanity of the situation. “Congratulations to that old biddy. This must be the first and last time anyone took Eleanor Jenkins, owner of the town beauty parlor and the worst gossip there is, as an authority on life.”

The older man shrugged. “Now I can tell you apart from the cheerleaders at the games,” his father said in a lame attempt at a joke. He ran his hand over his son’s buzzed head, brushing off some loose hair. Eliot flinched and Bud turned away. 

“Clean that up and be out the door in ten minutes,” his father said. “They’re expecting you early for choir practice.”

Eliot fetched a broom and swept up the hair glumly. His thick hair did seem to go every which way, long or short, which was why he was trying for a neat pony tail-length. But seeing how mad his father was about hair that barely reached his chin, he fumed at the principle of the thing.

He knew his mama’s family had some Cherokee blood, and he’d checked out a couple books about their history from the library. He stomped around louder than strictly necessary while he got ready for church, thinking about how the boarding schools used to try and control Native kids by cutting off their hair. 

Guitar in hand, he walked by his father eating breakfast and slammed out of the house. He drove to the church and hauled himself and his instrument into the building. It was built plain and low because all you needed was two or three gathered in His name. 

He muttered a greeting to the other musicians and assorted singers warming up for service. He’d rather die than admit it, but he looked forward to church because of the music. It offered a way to say things that he didn’t have the words for normally. In the absence of his mother, he could only be his father’s son. Words were never the currency of the Spencer house, where stony silence and slammed doors were the coin of the realm.

In the hubbub of tambourines and an upright piano, Eliot could get away with strumming a few bars of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” before falling in line with the tune for “Victory in Jesus.”

Eliot hauled the last of the two-by-fours from the truck bed and set them in the woodshed while Newton inspected his delivery. “Let me know if you need help with that ramp, sir,” he said, not minding the idea of earning a little extra cash. “I built a couple decks last summer and didn’t hear no complaints.”

Newton paused with the cash for the lumber in his hand. “Oh yeah? I might take you up on that. My Devon’s liable to smash every finger he’s got if I make him so much as lift a hammer, but every man needs to learn his way around home repairs. You can teach him. His granny needs the chair to get around now and there might be more things to fix in the house. How much you charge?”

Eliot accepted the man’s first offer without haggling. Devon was in the grade ahead of him and somehow projected being too cool for their town and everyone in it. He was curious how anyone managed to walk around like they barely saw the shabby houses and dusty roads. Getting to work alongside the older boy was a rare opportunity.

He showed up the next day after school. Devon was standing in the driveway, tall, dark-haired, and less than enthused at being sentenced to manual labor. Eliot let down the tailgate to drag some supplies off the truck bed and handed a table saw to the other boy. He noticed that Devon’s eyes were a hazel color that was the exact same smoky shade as the shop’s 1940s green pickup covered with dust.

Eliot grabbed his toolbox with a couple of beers hidden inside. He lifted the lid just far enough for Devon to see. “Hey man,” he said. “This ramp ain’t gonna build itself. Can I set this up in the shed while I cut the wood?”

Devon’s mouth twitched at the promise of doing nothing but drink beer. He sat on a stump and watched Eliot work. 

Doing things with his hands was easy. Eliot started helping his father out with odd construction jobs when he was a little kid, so maybe he was showing off a little. This was an unusual chance to talk to someone interesting outside of the rigid social rituals of football practice, church, or holding hands in the Safeway parking lot while someone blasted the radio out of their car stereo.

“I hear you want to be a doctor,” he said the first day. The other boy was an excellent student, and he wasn’t at all apologetic about it the way some bookish kids were. Eliot respected that, even though he didn’t move in those circles himself. 

“A vet, but yeah,” Devon admitted. “I basically followed Dr. Hardy around until he realized I wouldn’t stop. Now he lets me come on his rounds when he checks on the animals at the farms. I want to open an animal hospital like they have in Aurora, but first I’ve gotta get out of here and go to school.”

“And your family wants you to stay.” Eliot sawed a length of wood neatly down the middle. “I have the same argument with my dad, but I don’t have any reason for getting away besides being bored out of my mind.”

Getting to talk to someone who clearly wasn’t going to settle for the limited life others expected for him was a great solace for Eliot. He couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do as long as it wasn’t in the same 50 square miles where he grew up. 

They talked and drank beer, Eliot coaxing Devon into hitting a few nails. He laughed when the other boy cursed at hitting his finger nearly every time. Unlike nearly everyone else in town, Devon thought before he opened his mouth, and he spoke carefully as if he wanted his words to come out right. 

Academic achievement wasn’t expected of Eliot, so he didn’t try very hard at school. He didn’t need to, if he was honest. Talking to Devon made him realize that books could take him farther in his imagination even if he was still stuck driving paint and wood down the same country roads in a truck that up and quit when it took a mind to.

They worked together a few days a week. He read some of the books recommended by his new friend and listened attentively to the excitement Devon shared about the things he was learning from his apprenticeship with the vet.

The ramp was taking shape in the woodshed, though Eliot was trying to build it as slowly as he could. The older boy kept one eye on a thick book while he helped Eliot sand the surface of the panels leaning against the walls. “Doc Hardy is testing me on anatomy so that I can start giving horses shots on my own,” Devon said. “C’mere, El, this is cool.” Eliot put down his sandpaper and walked closer as Devon brandished a nail. 

“You’ve got to stand close enough to get the needle in, but not where they can kick you,” Devon said, sidling around Eliot as if he were a skittish horse. Then in one quick movement, he reached out and grasped the skin at the scruff of Eliot’s neck and had the nail poised at the surface. “Then you press it into the muscle right there, and if you’re quick about it, you don’t get bit.” 

The other boy hadn’t removed his hand from Eliot’s neck. “Aren’t you afraid of getting bit?” Eliot risked. 

“Kind of makes it more interesting,” Devon said, one hand steadying Eliot’s head and the other tipping his mouth up towards his own. 

The first press of their lips was electric. The nail fell to the ground and clattered on one of the planks. They jumped apart, looking over their shoulders. Eliot was looking at the boy in front of him with eyes wide from fear and something else. 

Devon patted his hair growing awkwardly from its buzz cut and beginning to fly in all directions, shushing him like a horse. “What they don’t know--” he began, pressing his mouth to Eliot’s again, and oh Lord, kissing like that certainly didn’t hurt Eliot that day, or the next or the next. 

It didn’t go much farther than that. Devon and Eliot made and unmade a hundred plans for trips they would never take: a road trip to the university Devon was hoping to attend. A drive up to the mountains to see a meteor shower. A trip to visit their mamas' graves (both had lost their mothers young) to tell these women whose absence had shaped their lives that they were turning out all right. That they didn’t have to worry. They were beginning to figure out who they were.

They were cooking up reasons to keep spending time together after the ramp couldn’t be drawn out any longer. Eliot and Devon were going to do a science project together. Devon was going to give him tutoring in chemistry that he really didn’t need. They were going to work together on an old junker Eliot rescued from the junkyard that promised to be more reliable than the ancient pickup. It would be Eliot doing all the work, of course, showing off his strength and dexterity while Devon read things out of his books. 

But with these excuses they would get to loose the torrent of words that came rushing out of the usually taciturn boys now that they had learned there was someone to talk to. And if they ever got a moment truly alone, maybe they would find more uses for the mouths and hands that settled, hot and eager but still shy, on the surface of their clothes. 

The kisses were exciting, but they weren’t even the main magnetic pull for Eliot. Talking with Devon had opened up a part of himself he didn’t know he had. He was interested in things, and the world was a lot bigger away from Spencer’s Hardware. 

The amount of work they were doing was dwindling. Eliot would come over and they would take out some sandpaper and strew around some nails in some pretense of industry. Or he would work on some unnecessary detail, like a fancy rim around the wheelchair ramp specially designed to allow rain to flow off. Sometimes he helped around the house—a few times with repairs that Devon’s dad set for him, other times with things he thought would make life a little easier for his friend’s frail old granny. 

Devon brought books to the woodshed and read passages that excited him. Eliot had never met anyone who was so passionate about things, especially about books. The subjects ranged from science to history, but his favorite thing was to listen to his friend talk about literature. Stories and language for their own sake were so impractical that they were foreign, completely unlike the utilitarian world they lived in. Devon’s mom had been to college and was a schoolteacher, so his father wasn’t as dismissive of learning as Eliot’s, though Newton himself had never ventured far from the small town where he was born.

Eliot never pretended to understand the technical things Devon got from the things he read aloud. He was transfixed by the person reading them. Even if his entire body didn’t feel charged by electricity whenever he was around Devon, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself falling in love with the person who read to him, eyes shining.

“Here’s a good one. What do you think of this line?” Devon enjoyed picking selections of poetry and hearing Eliot’s unvarnished reactions. Eliot had never thought of himself as someone with refined sensibilities. He liked to whoop and holler with the other local boys on a Saturday night at bonfires after a game, and he took a particular satisfaction at knocking down bigger football players by identifying a weakness in the way they held their bodies. 

The weather was getting cooler and soon Eliot wouldn’t be able to excuse the t-shirts he usually wore, partially because it was hot work hammering out there in the shed, and also because he liked the appreciative looks Devon sent his way when he was hauling wood around. 

He’d never felt that way about himself before: his body was something to use, a weapon on the football field, or an animal awareness in sync with a horse he was riding. Maybe a way of attracting attention from girls like Aimee. But she never watched him move like Devon did. If anyone ever told him he wouldn’t punch someone in the mouth for using the word “beauty” about him, he wouldn’t have believed it.

 _“Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, /Be not afraid of my body,”_ Devon recited, moving a hand over Eliot’s work-hardened arms as the younger boy leaned back and took a drink of beer. Eliot felt the long, cool slide down his throat and saw Devon swallow with him. There was a congruence between them after such a short period of time. One of them would start talking and the other would immediately grasp the sensation left by a dream or the feeling in their own body that was resonating in the other boy’s flesh. 

That day, sweat was pouring from Eliot’s neck and trickling between his shoulder blades. With precision, Devon lifted up the back of his shirt and licked the trail of the perspiration as if he knew with certainty the path it was tracing down Eliot’s back. They stored these tentative interactions and then relived them in their separate beds. This they both knew without having to talk about it. The perfect conformity of their minds did not require them to analyze what was happening. 

“Dev, I’m not gonna make it till I get home if you keep doin’ that,” Eliot said, arching his back away and pulling down his shirt. “Yesterday, I had to pull over and pretend the truck broke down again. If everyone didn’t know this piece of shit needs the engine valves tightened all the time, the three people who honked their horns and waved at me would’ve slowed down to help and seen more than they bargained for.” 

He sighed. “And don’t play dirty. Walt Whitman ain’t even allowed in the library, and for good reason.” Devon’s contraband copy had belonged to his mother. He’d stitched it inside the cover of a book about equine diseases so he could read it openly.

 _“But the body is stubborn: it craves bodily presences: it has its own peculiar tenacities—we might say aspirations as well as desires_ ,” Devon whispered, hitting below the belt with more Whitman. 

Eliot reached a shaking arm towards the other boy and drew him closer. He moaned when Devon took him in his arms and kissed him so deeply, he felt it in the roots of his hair and all the way down to his feet. 

Devon released him. Eliot was panting like a horse in lather. The older boy shushed him and rubbed his head with its unruly hair. “I can’t keep doing what I want to do to you, because it would be cruel to stop, and we’d have to stop.” 

“What would you do?” Eliot asked him in a whisper. He had no one to ask about what men might get up to together. His mind supplied a tangle of images every night in his solitary bed, but he wasn’t sure about the mechanics that might satisfy his desires. He needed Devon, who was always two steps ahead, and who had a growing selection of anatomy books, to put things clearly in that gentle, sure way he had. 

For once, Devon was brought up short. His eyes didn’t seem to know where to land. Eliot felt a heady sense of power at having stilled that agile mouth. He smiled wickedly, “I’ll raise you a DH Lawrence: _When genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.”_ Eliot had always had an excellent memory. 

Once, when he told Devon that the English poet made him think of galloping on a stolen horse towards a barn you could see in the distance because it was about to rain, the other boy had laughed. “You’ve got some kind of taste and imagination, El. It’s something you were born to. You could be a lot of things. I’d love to hear you sing something other than a hymn written by a Baptist minister.”

Devon’s dad wasn’t religious, but sometimes they took his granny to service so she could hear the hymns of her youth. On those occasions, with Devon’s eyes on him Eliot sang with some other kind of devotion and his hands felt like they were going to break his guitar neck in half.

But that day they had specific tastes on their minds. “I know what happens when people go park their cars at the quarry,” Devon began in answer to his friend’s question. Eliot flinched. He was still spending time with Aimee, and he didn’t like to admit that it was becoming more of an alibi to distract from what he was feeling about Devon. When Aimee did some of the things that gave a slight release to his body that was constantly screaming for true satisfaction, he often closed his eyes and pretended it was someone else’s mouth.

Devon tracked the shifty look in the blue eyes as Eliot glanced away and back at the hazel eyes that saw him all the way down, farther than he could see in himself.

“Next time, think of me having you, and you having me.”

Eliot made a strangled noise and clenched his fists in the other boy’s flannel shirt. “Dev, you’re killing me here.” 

With a sad smile, Devon recited, _“The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God/Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.”_

“Ugh,” Eliot leaned back, the spell broken. He recognized the writer, even though he’d not heard the line before. “Sylvia Plath. Tastes like overcooked collards.”

“A lotta uses for a sensitive tongue, El,” Devon said to him, ignoring the clever look from Eliot about the double entendre. “Apply to college. I’ll be there waiting for you in Boulder.” 

Eliot always changed the subject when his friend brought that up. Something reared up in rebellion at the idea of being chained to a desk for four more years. 

That day, they were distracted by his granny hollering at them from the porch, asking Devon to fetch something for her from a top cabinet.

Eliot took a paintbrush and can of weatherproofing off the shelf and carefully noted the cost down in the shop ledger. “This is the last of it, Dad,” he said to Bud, who was arranging penny candy in the glass case at the register. “We’ll get the last coat of it on the ramp today before it’s set to rain tomorrow.”

“Mmph,” his father said. That was about as much as they ever talked, so Eliot didn’t wait to hear more as he picked his keys off the hook. 

Eliot drove out to Devon’s house. Normally, he would go inside for a glass of iced tea and to say hello to Devon’s grandma. She was a sweet old lady and conveniently very hard of hearing, leaving the two boys to talk freely in their frequent breaks from construction. The older boy took care of his grandmother so his father could work at the feed store, so they were essentially alone every afternoon.

“Hi, where’s Devon?” he shouted to Devon's granny. 

She fumbled around on the kitchen table and held up a note. 

It read, “Sorry I missed you, El. Out with Doc Hardy.”

He nodded, disappointed. It took no time at all to finish weatherproofing the wood. He packed up his tools and the leftover supplies and drove off, wondering what veterinary adventure his friend would share with him the next time they met up. 

But even though they used to sometimes see each other in the library, or going in and out of the cafeteria when the sophomore and junior classes crossed paths at lunch, Eliot didn’t see Devon for several days, not counting a few glimpses from down the hall. 

“Hey man,” he said, deliberately loitering near Devon’s locker at the end of the day one Friday, even though he was supposed to be on his way to the football field. “What’s up? I thought you were going to start pretending to tutor me on organic molecules.” 

His friend looked at him with something that might have been longing but looked more like resignation as he retrieved his book bag and slung it over his shoulder. 

“I guess I’m not as good at that as I thought,” he muttered. “’Bye, El.” Devon walked away. 

In the game that night, Eliot pounded the other team’s players with a vengeance. He looked up at one point and saw Bud cheering him on after a particularly vicious tackle. Besides losing the only friendship that made his limited life bearable, Eliot hated that he’d been outmaneuvered by his dad. Obviously, his father had sniffed out something that he objected to, though Eliot was helpless to imagine what Bud thought it was. There was no way the elder Spencer could have known about a few kisses and the traitorous dreams of moving to a larger town, maybe going to school. Only the cicadas had seen the two boys touch. 

If there was any hint of scandal, the story would be all over town, but nothing happened. It was simply the fact that recently, Eliot had exceeded his allowable level of happiness, and he needed to be brought down a peg. And now he couldn’t call his father on saying whatever he’d said to scare off Devon. Any complaint would be seen as an admission that there was something he desperately needed from the bookish older boy, though he’d not even allowed himself to consider exactly what it was. 

Eliot kept doing exactly what he was expected to. It was the easiest way to keep nurturing mutinous thoughts of escape. When he bought a punching bag and hung it from a tree in the backyard, his father grunted something that might be approval. The town was strangling him and he beat at the oppressive smallness of his life in the afternoons that now promised only more of the same.


	4. Chapter 4

“I want to look normal,” Eliot typed out. Moving his face enough to talk was out of the question. The swelling was going down, but now what he saw was even worse. They tried to keep mirrors away from him, but he caught glimpses in reflective surfaces and his stomach roiled. His face was immobilized with bandages, and he was going to have his jaw wired shut soon. Not to mention the cranial procedure they were going to do when they were sure there was no more swelling in his brain. There was surgery, and a lot of it, in his future.

“What does that mean?” the doctor asked, a photo of Eliot, or rather, Eliot’s former face, displayed on their computer screen.

He gestured angrily at the photo. His hands were still bruised and he hated typing anyway. It should be self-explanatory. He knew his healthcare was essentially a big consolation prize offered to people when the government owed them more than they’d actually admit, so he wasn’t trying to be a model patient.

The doctor looked over at Eliot. “The psych profile sent up some red flags. I think we need to proceed cautiously.”

Eliot tried to snort and then coughed. His nose was broken all to hell and he couldn’t breathe out of it.

“Throw a rock and you’ll hit someone with PTSD in this place,” he wrote on the screen.

The doctor didn’t rise to the bait.

“I’m not talking about that part of your history. We’re all vetted to a high level of clearance in this facility. I can read what isn’t in your file,” the doctor said with that refreshing honesty that made him sort of glad he was being cared for by others who had served and knew the score about what really went on under the auspices of Uncle Sam. “It’s standard procedure to gauge the mental status of someone who’s had a severe craniofacial injury that requires some life-changing decisions. I’m not sure about you, to be honest.”

“I want to be able to move my mouth so I can tell you and anyone else what I think about psychological profiles,” he mashed into the keyboard. “And then maybe have food that doesn’t fit through a straw.”

“When asked to pick words to describe your old face, none of the ones you chose were—complimentary.”

“I know who I am, all right? Let me go back to being the same bastard known, loved, and wanted on five continents. I’ve got stuff to do.”

“About that. You can’t go back to—” The doctor chose the words carefully. “Private security work. The surgery you need is going to patch you together, and we’ll do a very good job. But the next head injury will be your last. Do you understand me?”

Eliot closed his eyes and mastered his breathing. He felt like he was locked in the woodshed like when he was a kid mastering claustrophobia. Except now he was locked in his body and there was no getting out. He opened his eyes. “As long as I don’t look like a monster, I’ll live.”

“I think we need to determine exactly what that means to you. Surgery isn’t going to help you escape from what you see inside yourself. You need to talk to someone first.”

Eliot threw the keyboard across the room as a more efficient method of protesting the psychobabble standing in between him and whatever shitty future he would be able to scrape together.

The next day he had the surgery on his skull to implant the plate. He was out of it for a few days, but at least the swelling had gone down enough that he could talk as long as he didn’t move his mouth too much.

When he was up to it, they sent him to the therapist they assigned to him.

“How’s your pain level today?”

“It’s fine.”

“You haven’t been taking the recommended dose.”

“Doc, I can’t afford to get too happy on the good stuff. Trust me. There’s things that I could say when I’m in an altered state that neither you nor I nor any government agency wanna hear.”

She knit her brows together.

“What?” His heart sank. “What did I say those couple days after surgery?”

“Do you remember our last session?”

He searched his mind and began to get uneasy.

“We had a session after surgery?” He saw the look of concern and didn’t want to give them any excuse to keep him there longer out of fear that he was brain-damaged or crazy.

Then the disjointed images resolved themselves into hazy memories. “You showed me a lot of pictures. Hell, I didn’t think any of those existed anymore. I’ve had someone cleaning up my tracks online.”

He thought of Hardison agreeing without question when he asked the hacker to clean up any trace of his past online, not like he’d left much of a digital footprint. Once he started developing ties to the team, he didn’t want God knows who tracking him down from some of the dark times, and really, it was a relief to know someone who could erase as much of his past as possible. It always meant a lot that when it really counted, Hardison knew how to respect boundaries.

He got a little ribbing about a 4-H award and a youth group retreat, a few good-natured threats about sharing a young Eliot with chin-length hair and flyway curls holding a football helmet after a game. The look on his face must have said something, because Alec never said anything again and no pictures were slipped into a briefing as a joke.

“You haven’t complained about the bandages. We showed you what you looked like after the cranial surgery. Most people are shocked and upset. You weren’t.”

She picked up a mirror from the desk and let him look. He felt nothing except a despair at how long it would take him to get out of the place, and a concern that he might have been beaten right out of the dating pool.

“Yeah, a lot worse could’ve happened a long time ago. A few comrades didn’t fare so well. I’m more concerned with walking around with the head equivalent of a glass jaw. I knew I’d have to retire someday if I didn’t go down fighting, but I never considered not being able to take care of myself. There’s a long line that’s been waiting to make me pay for some things. I’m gonna have to go on the run, maybe hide out in a Tibetan monastery.” He shook his head. “Actually, not Tibet.”

“About that. Maybe we can walk through some of the things you said when we looked through your photos yesterday.” She brought up a file on her computer monitor.

“When asked to write about the features you liked about your face, you wrote, ‘Good for picking up who I want,’ ‘Doesn’t show emotion,’ and ‘intimidating.’”

“Yeah, so?” Eliot replied, embarrassed at his drug-induced candor. “What’s the right answer?”

“Some people say they like their eye color or they like having their father’s nose, or something,” she said gently. She scrolled down the screen.

“And the things you don’t like:

“’Setting off facial recognition databases.’ ‘Goddamnit, you haven’t given up yet?’  
‘Glutton for punishment.” ‘Seeing who I’ve become.’ And this really confused me: ‘Inertia as an art form.”

Eliot grimaced as well as his face would allow. They asked him a whole barrage of strange questions while he was on heavy-duty pain medicine, he said a bunch of nonsense, and now he’d never live it down.

“I was out of my mind on drugs. Nothing I said would even be admissible in court.”

She sighed. “You’re not on trial here, though you seem quite sure you deserve to be.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Uncle Sam doesn’t roll out the red carpet with off-the-books medical care for the vets who get medals. If I’ve done half the things you suspect I’ve done, you wouldn’t feel safe about getting this close to me when I'm in fighting shape.” He lifted his wounded arms, felt the weakness and shooting pain, and let them fall back down.

“We actually want to help you, Eliot. You do understand that?”

He rolled his eyes. “This is a marriage of convenience. Y’all need someone to test out some reconstructive techniques on. Someone with a past they can’t admit to, and no one who’ll miss them in the present, is a perfect guinea pig.”

“I’m sure there are people who care about you. Colonel Vance is just one of several highly placed individuals who are concerned about your wellbeing.”

He couldn’t muster up a sarcastic rejoinder to that. He’d gotten a few messages from Vance since being admitted. They were the only thing, besides pure stubbornness, keeping him from crawling into bed and never coming out. The fear of disappointing others had always been the most powerful motivator for him and a thousand of other former grunts like him. Most of them hadn’t been so careless in the company they kept, however. Maybe if Eliot had surrounded himself by better people he wouldn’t have fallen so far down.

He felt the therapist’s eyes on him. “I appreciate Vance’s concern. C’mon, doc. I’m no stranger to pain. Let’s get the surgeries going so I can figure out what I’m going to do after that.”

“The first thing they’re going to do is reconstruct your jaw. This is a fairly straightforward procedure but it is also one of the most fundamental features that defines the facial aesthetic.” She clicked on an icon and his old face appeared in several different versions across the screen. “On the continuum of shapes, you had a fairly square jaw before,” she pointed to his old face on the far right. Then she noted something in his expression. “What is it?”

He was transfixed at the image to the far left of the screen, the one most unlike his old face. That was him, but not him. It was so eerily familiar. He had the most intense feeling of déjà vu.

Then she paused. “I’m going to show you a photo if you promise not to get agitated.”

“Whaddaya mean? I’m not like some of the walking wounded on the other floors. I’m not so far gone that I need to be restrained.” After being wheeled through some of the PTSD wards to and from surgery, he was thankful that he’d never fallen apart like that.

She brought up a picture of him standing in front of a horse with Aimee. They were at the stables where her dad trained. His hair was at its longest and especially curly. He must have been sweating from hauling hay, like he used to help out sometimes. They looked so young and happy.

“A girl I knew. The one that got away, to hear some tell it. Fill in some generic story about high school sweethearts and save me the trouble.” He paused. “Why would I get agitated about Aimee? She’s married again and has kids.”

“When I showed you this picture, you didn’t mention Aimee.” She looked at him steadily. “You said ‘Devon’ and started throwing things.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Damn pills. I’m not taking any more. Don’t be surprised if there’s a scene the next time a nurse tries to feed ‘em to me.”

Eliot saw Devon from time to time, most often at the stable where he helped out to spend time with Aimee. The other boy was spending all his time with the veterinarian and developed a real professional manner when inspecting the animals and helping with minor treatments. They never spoke more than a few words, but they didn’t avoid each other. There was some tacit agreement that it would look suspicious if they were uncomfortable around each other.

Then Devon went off to the University of Colorado and he didn’t see him before his own graduation. Maybe the flat-out war that ensured at the Spencer house when he announced he was enlisting got around town and all the way to Boulder, because he heard from Devon before he left.

His dad handed him the phone without a word. They weren’t speaking to each other that last week. He heard Devon's voice. It was the first time he’d ever called the house. “I wanted you to have my number in case you want to keep in touch.”

At the time, it seemed like a nice gesture, but they hadn’t spoken in so long he didn’t think much of it.

It turned out that the army was a place that gave him a lot to think about. How much of it was bullshit and then the real things that surprised him—the bond with the other soldiers, and a current of patriotism so deep it was almost embarrassing. He needed to talk to someone who would really listen. He called Devon.

They talked by phone when he could. His first leave, he went to visit Devon.

When Eliot got off the bus in Boulder, he shouldered his regulation knapsack and stepped outside the bus station and into the crisp winter air. The neighborhood wasn’t a good one, but there were enough college kids in need of a cheap place to live that he received some looks of distate from newly minted liberals who thought only poor dupes, or maybe just the poor in general, joined the army on purpose.

Eliot’s heart was pounding in his chest, and he couldn’t stop smiling, no matter how dumb the college kids thought he was. He was about to have his long-delayed time with Devon, no grannies or parents or anyone standing in their way. He was sure that they’d have to deal with an inevitable roommate, but with any luck, it would be some frat kid who spent his nights getting hammered and they’d have some time alone.

He walked a mile to the city bus stop Devon had described and then waited to get picked up and taken to the university and the dormitory where his friend lived.

Eliot watched the neighborhood get more affluent until the gutters were clean, the shop windows filled with college paraphernalia, and the streets teemed with eager young students. Eliot looked at them with some of the contempt they felt for him. These kids had no idea that someone was fighting for them to stay as ignorant as they were. Eliot was just your average grunt—no one told him anything about where he would be stationed or what he’d do when he got there. He didn’t put on airs and think anyone would ever deign to explain why he did the things he’d be ordered to do.

But he was still part of the vast, thick-skinned beast that was the US military, and that meant he was hooked into a nerve of a thing that was lumbering across the world stage. He was part of history, and he looked down his nose at these kids who thought that such a thing was only to be found in books.

Eliot wondered what books his friend was into these days. He was looking forward to his friend reading to him, but first, he was looking forward to something else more.

He could hardly believe that it had been nearly two years since he and Devon had been together. The last six months of phone calls and letters had erased all of the loneliness that had fallen when they stopped hanging out.

The other recruits teased Eliot about his back-home girl, and he let them, enjoying the knowledge that there was someone who cared about him as something other than a cog in the well-oiled military machine. The other guys had families at home, mothers and sisters and fathers who sent them care packages and worried about where they’d be sent. Eliot was unencumbered by any of that, and he was glad. The one waiting for him back home wasn’t trying to hold him back.

Dev sent him photocopies of pages from his textbooks with passages circled and notes in the margins. That was all Eliot needed to get through the boring and humiliating uniformity of the army while he waited to be united with his destiny overseas. He could feel Devon’s mind coming into flower in the sun of a new environment. That was all the care he needed from his care packages.

Though they had been apart for all this time, Eliot never doubted what kind of welcome was awaiting him. Their phone calls had to be casual due to the army buddies walking by in hope of hearing Eliot saying something corny to his girl, and to keep Devon’s floor mates from hearing anything compromising. Devon also took the precaution of having a girl from his dorm make the calls and ask for Eliot. When he got on the line, they’d developed a kind of code. Everything they both knew about horses made their eavesdroppers think that some intense animal husbandry was going on back home. In their own vague language, they had been sharing romantic declarations and some rather explicit promises of what they’d do when they saw each other.

He walked through the university grounds, knowing he looked like a hayseed, eyes wide with their first look at a place of higher learning. When really, he was thrilled to see in three dimensions what he'd imagined all these months. This was Devon’s world, and they were about to share it. The rolling lawns and outdoors study groups were infinitely more worthy of being their backdrop than their old home town.

Eliot stopped to ask directions a couple of times before he ended up at the large, blockish building that was Devon's dormitory. He got his face under control. No sense in compromising Devon’s reputation even worse than it already would be by having a military buddy from back home showing up.

He gave Devon's name and room number to the bored-looking student at the front desk and then stood there, relishing how badass he looked with his muscles and newly minted worldly air.

“Hey El,” he turned around at the familiar voice. “You made it.” Devon slung an arm around his shoulders briefly and said to the person at the front desk, “My cousin Eliot, here, is about to finish Basic Training and go off to save the world.”

The college kid looked disgusted. “Sign in here,” he said, pointing to the registry.

Eliot was working on his glare, and he managed a good one that had the rude student wilting in a matter of seconds.

“You’re doing things to me, El, wait till we get to my room, Jesus,” Devon muttered, steering them towards the elevator.

“Is your roommate home?” Eliot asked, not sure what he’d do if they couldn’t be alone immediately.

“No roommate. Just us,” Devon said as he let them inside.

"How'd you swing that?" he asked, remembering that there was a roommate at the start of the semester.

"I know how to work the system," Devon muttered.

They didn't come up for air until late into the night. There were too many things that had been bottled up for too long. In between, Devon read to him from his assigned books. He traced the muscles he was learning about in pre-vet classes and named every inch of Eliot's body. The young soldier found it relaxing to be able to stretch his own animal nature across the bed, showing off the intelligence he was cultivating in his body.

The ever-perceptive Devon caught this. He admired the other body with his hands while reading from a book he'd mentioned over the phone a few times. 

_"If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.”_

"I ain't sure how many fortuities are gonna be fluttering our way," Eliot warned. "I'm probably gonna be sent to Afghanistan. Korea, if I'm lucky."

"Ssh, I'm not thinking about that right now," Devon said, running a hand down the strong muscles in Eliot's back. "As long as we can talk sometimes. Write to me , tell me what you see so I can see it through your eyes." He nuzzled in Eliot's neck. "Just come back to me when you can. You need someone to remind you you're not marching in line with all the rest." He rekindled the fire between them that promised to never fall into ash, “This book talks about how, under communism, people lost themselves to marches and uniforms and political movements. I'm more scared of that happening to you than I am of you getting hurt, honestly." He ran his hands up Eliot's arms. "If you get hurt, you're still you. I just don't want the army to change who you are."

"As long as I can come home to this sometimes, I'll be fine," Eliot groaned into the mattress. "Ain't no uniforms here."

They spent three blissful days together, mostly in bed or accompanying Devon on his rounds at the local animal hospital. Their connection was intense, but he made no promises. If Devon had asked anything of him, Eliot would have shut him out like Aimee. But Devon understood what the young soldier didn’t say as much as what he did. It made him a precious outlet in the increasingly rare intervals when Eliot could get leave, or even communicate with the outside world.

The visits tapered off but Eliot still called as often as he could. Devon was the only one he could really talk to. Even after he stopped being able to say anything about what he did, it was nice to hear what was going on in the other man’s life. He was so proud when Devon finished his schooling. He was happy for him when he started dating a guy. Eliot sent a beautiful rug from Afghanistan for their apartment when they moved in together.

Then one day, he moved heaven and earth to make a sat phone call to Colorado. Eliot was feeling himself sink into a whirl of PMC jobs and a rote efficiency with violence that, in his rare reflective moments, made him wonder if he should be more concerned. Only the memory of Devon made him occasionally ask those questions. It was suddenly really important, after a job with particularly blurry ethical lines, to find out if his old friend could see something he recognized in the ex-soldier who had nearly lost the faculty of conversation.

When his friend answered the phone, Eliot was dismayed to hear Devon not making any sense. Someone else, not the boyfriend, took the phone away and got on the line.

Eliot listened to the diagnosis—toxoplasmosis. From one of the cats his friend treated at the animal hospital, no doubt. It was a while since they last spoke. He didn’t even know that Devon was HIV positive. Devon must not have known either, kept working with animals as usual, and now he had full-blown AIDS and dementia. The friend on the other end of the line had some choice things to say about the boyfriend, who apparently was sleeping around on the always-careful Devon.

Devon asked whether he was being safe every time they talked on the phone. He made Eliot promise to get tested every six months, and he did, no matter how difficult it was while on a job. Eliot was the one who got bled on all the time. It couldn’t be true.

The friend said it wouldn’t be long, so he should come while there was still time.

Eliot promised he would. And then someone showed up wanting payback for a messy situation in Ghana, and he was on the run for longer than he expected. When he could next get to the phone to arrange travel back to the States, it was too late. Devon was gone.

He mourned his friend, but he always had something else to focus on. It was only looking back that Eliot could see what it did to him when he lost that one tie to normal life, to someone who knew him and never expected him to be other than what he was.

It was too painful to think about the mind he loved leaving Devon at the end, so he stopped thinking entirely. He accepted any job offered because he had no one left that he might disappoint.

Eliot opened his eyes to the therapist’s expectant face.

“He was the one that got away, to hear others tell it.”

There were several more sessions of them looking at faces of random people so that he could say what he saw in their features and how they made him feel.

“You haven’t asked about the surgery in the last week.”

“I’m waiting for you to give me the all clear. These meetings will get me what I want, so I’m doing them.”

“And you want?”

“To get out of here. To get back in shape. To cook a real meal that requires chewing, and eat it. To go home with someone and spend a few days in bed remembering that I’m human.”

She held up the mirror once more and he sighed. “I’m used to rolling with the punches life sends me. If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, let me know what you need to see. I’m bored, and tired of being scrutinized and analyzed every day. Is that the normal reaction?”

She brought up a picture of him, a recent one that must have escaped Hardison’s internet scrubbing. His jaw tensed and he winced at the pain.

“We can bring you back there. No scars. The doctors here are the best. It will be painful, but you’ll be yourself again.”

He picked up the mirror and tried to find those features under the bandages. Then he slammed it back down. “It’s a relief not looking at that face. Are you happy? I said it.”

She smiled. “Now we can work on what you do want to see. You can be in surgery next week if I’m satisfied by the progress we make.”

She gave him some printouts to look over. He spent hours poring over the digital mockups of his possible faces. It was a heady feeling, to be able to choose who he could be, particularly after spending so many years trying to run from his past. He could finally be free of the fear that facial recognition would send up a flag in some database. That someone would recognize him on the street and a hitman would take out him, or worse yet, a member of the team, in some dark alley.

It was the closest to hope that he’d felt in years. But he still couldn’t get the approval for surgery.

“Everything you’re saying is about what one face or another will do for other people. You want to look intimidating.”

“If I can’t beat someone’s ass anymore, I need to look as though I might.”

“You want to be attractive.”

“I don’t want to scare people. It would be nice to get laid sometime.”

“You want to be someone else.”

“In the eyes of Interpol and a few other legal agencies, yes.”

“But you haven’t been able to say what you want for yourself.”

She showed the photo array on the screen again. Despite himself, he felt his eyes sliding over to one of the more extreme transformations.

“You always look at that one and then point to one closer to what you used to look like. What does that face mean to you?”

Exhausted by all the talking, he blurted out, “It’s the face I see in my dreams, okay? It’s looking at me, but it’s also me.”

“What gender are you in your dreams, Eliot?” the therapist asked.

Eliot froze. He had no ready answer. Eliot was stunned.

“I don’t know. Kind of neither and both.”

His eyes searched hers. “That’s not normal, is it?”

She passed him the mouse. “This computer program shows you various possibilities within the limits of current surgical capabilities. The controls allow you to change nose shape and size, chin, jaw contours, etc.”

He clicked around until he understood the basics.

“Let me get a cup of tea. You play around with it.”

She returned ten minutes later to find him staring at the screen.

“You can do that?” he wrote, pointing at the image he’d created, which was almost exactly like the one that caught his eye.

Her eyes spent a long time moving from the manipulated photo, to his old face, then to his eyes, and back again several times.

“I’d like to talk a little more before we go to the surgeon with that many suggestions, but we’ve made a lot of progress today.”

She smiled at him while his stomach churned. “I’d like to go back to my room now,” he said, hiding the shaking in his hands.

That night, he lay in his bed, flipping through the sports channels (high-end treatment centers at least had good cable) and trying to calm whatever part of himself had shaken loose in the consulting room today. He’d never said it to anyone once he figured out that the recurring face in his dreams was his own.

He stared at the television screen for hours but couldn’t have said one thing he watched. For all that he was good at following orders, Eliot had been cursed with a powerful imagination, and now the face wouldn’t stop looking at him in his mind. Vivid mental imagery was very useful in his line of work. Being able to imagine himself somewhere else had gotten him through some pretty hideous torture. Projecting himself into a warm bed was a good way to forget that he was shivering in a windowless cell. His mind could effortlessly anticipate the moves of a dozen attackers when they were still a mere spark behind their eyes.

Imagination was also only one side of a coin, the other side being obsession. “God and country,” well, he’d eventually been cured of that one, but it took a few black ops and a state secret he was carrying to his grave. After any fight gone wrong, he repeated the entire sequence of moves again and again until he isolated his mistake, and then he’d do the corrected moves ten times more until they were muscle memory. Once, he remade a souffle six times, throwing it away until he got it exactly right. Though Hardison might ridicule him for all of the very distinctive details in his memory, attention to detail was often the only thing standing between his team and violent death.

That last thought made him want to grind his teeth, but any pressure on his ruined jaw hurt like hell. He was doing what he promised not to do: leaving them alone and exposed to every danger.

The therapist was grilling him about all kinds of things he never thought about, but she didn’t know enough to ask the really important questions, like what was happening to his team now that he wasn’t there to protect them.

He felt sick. He should be recovering from the first round of surgeries already and figuring out how to get discharged so that he could go back and check on them.

Yet Eliot was bone-tired. For the first time in his life, he didn’t want to yank himself up off the mat. He wanted to stop struggling.

And if he was honest with himself (and God help him for acquiring such a bad habit this late in the game, but with nothing to do all day he was developing an uncomfortable fascination with the truth) he didn’t often think about Parker or Hardison. That was a real betrayal of the two people who’d kept all that past from dragging him back down.

He didn't begin to piece all this together consciously for a long time, or he would certainly have talked to Devon about it. He had no desire to label himself, but he admitted to getting with guys while in the service and the PMCs. Sometimes out of convenience, sometimes because someone caught his eye. Devon embraced the whole identity thing and was living the life. Eliot never felt the need, though he respected his friend's insistence on living on his own terms.

“What’s the bar scene like in Berlin? I hear it’s the gay Mecca for Eastern Europe,” Devon asked once after he returned from a sojourn in an unspecified former Eastern Bloc country with an extended stopover in Berlin. He gave Devon a poster from a drag burlesque show he wandered into while performing surveillance on an extremist group in Germany. His friend loved seeing ephemera from other countries. Eliot enjoyed collecting bits of things to document a life that was moving too fast in countries that were running together, and then sharing the backstories with Devon.

“Dunno. I go where the wind takes me. Ended up in this place because an operative from a nationalist group I’m not at liberty to name was in love with a drag queen named Hildegarde. A bar’s a bar. I don’t do labels,” he said.

“Folks back home have a few labels handy for what we just did,” Devon observed, touching the lips he’d been kissing. Sometimes, even though Devon was with someone else, they did a little to recall their old visits. A few kisses and touches, nothing more.

Eliot scoffed and ran his hand down the other man’s chest, memorizing the body that he would evoke in the next time he fell afoul of torturers or spent the night in a cave waiting for the right head to wander into his rifle sight.

Devon ran his hands through the hair Eliot kept short and anonymous. “Because Eliot Spencer is a free spirit?” He asked playfully. “Because you swore allegiance to one flag, and that means you can’t fly the rainbow one? Because-- ”

“Because none of them fit. I don’t know why. They just don’t.”


	5. Chapter 5

PTSD isn’t like they depict in the war movies and television documentaries about washed-up vets. They say that a certain noise can transport you to another place, where you smell the gunpowder and hear the distinctive sound of Al Qaeda IEDs and feel the splatter of your buddies’ blood across your face. The horror wasn’t anything like that, or at least it wasn’t for Eliot.

Maybe he was dumb, but he didn’t even put together his own night terrors with the acronym until he busted the lip of a guy he was sharing a bed with in Luxembourg. He awoke to find himself pinned down by the man, another PMC, who was grinning down at him with his bloody mouth.

“No sweat. PTSD is an occupational hazard,” he said, keeping Eliot down until his muscles stopped fighting and then staying on top of him for the fun of it. “I have a touch of it myself. Smell of smoke does it for me. Not sure which war zone it’s bringing me back to, though.”

Eliot was too surprised to enjoy the weight of the fine-looking comrade who tumbled him into bed the night before. 

“PTSD? I wasn’t dreaming about any place I been or people I shot.” He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “It was like being blind and knowing you’re about to die but you might already be dead because it feels familiar.”

The man rolled off him. “I can’t really pin it down either. I was kind of relieved the first time it happened.” 

Eliot nodded. “’Cause there must really be something wrong with you to not feel be affected by what we’ve seen and done,” he completed. “Yeah, I guess it’s not entirely bad news.”

He got out of bed naked, dumped out the remains of a bottle of beer, and filled it with water from the tap. 

“You wanna talk about it?”

Eliot took a drink and then slipped back into bed. “I can think of better ways to use my time before going back on the job.” 

When starting awake with a scream strangled in his throat became a regular occurrence, Eliot did make some casual inquiries among other people who’d seen too much. Some of them knew exactly what had opened that door in their head that they couldn’t keep shut. Others were like him—thrust into primal, undifferentiated fear.

The nights when a face--one of his sponsored deaths, or occasionally, someone he couldn’t save--appeared out of the formless dread, he welcomed it. He saw the descent into bottomless nightmare as the completion of a long, long degenerative process that began when he stopped seeing people as individuals and began calibrating them as that moment’s constellation of muscle mass, velocity, and lethal intent. 

What truly chilled him to the bone wasn’t the accumulation of guilt or knowledge of the pain he’d caused. That would be too noble. It was a selfish fear, the horror of being the last mote of consciousness in a vicious world that had melted into a void without form or limit. Good and bad had left his world without fanfare. What was left after black and white were hopelessly muddled together was an inchoate gray that stuck to his hands and threatened to drag him back into the primordial muck every time he closed his eyes. 

Of course, he had enough symptoms to render him a stereotype. Some nights, he, the man who’d lived for three days on crickets in a crawl space under a den of insurgents in Iraq, felt darkness as a tangible predator. The slightest sound had him jumping out of his skin. There was a crawling sensation all over his body and he couldn’t breathe.

As with any threat, he mapped out the danger, learned how to master his reflexes, and eventually embraced it as a friend because that’s what enemies become after long familiarity.

He learned to never fall asleep next to anyone who didn’t possess the unconscious reflexes to protect themselves if he started flailing. It was better that way, not getting in too deep with civilians. They mistook his bad nights as a symptom of conscience. He walked through the world missing something and there was no hiding it. Eliot’s soul, if there ever was such an animal, had been a sickly species that was now extinct. 

Trauma was too merciful a word for something he brought on himself. And there was no “post” about it. His was a damnation without end.

If he welcomed the faces that give form to his private hell, there was one set of eyes he dreaded to find trained on him. First off, he couldn’t remember where he’d seen that face, and the idea that he’d killed or abandoned so many people that he couldn’t place all of them was not a pleasant one. But that person, whoever they were, looked at him with the most chilling disappointment that was worse than any rage or pain he saw in the others he could account for.

The features were very distinct, even if he couldn’t describe them or call them up when his eyes were open. The person could be a man or a woman, but their indeterminate gender only served to make them more difficult to shut away in some corner of his mind. But more, it was the feeling that accompanied that person when they haunted his dreams. Their appearance instantly bequeathed the status of nightmare to the images rolling too fast behind his eyes. That face was the one most likely to wake him up feeling like he was dying, and also the one that, once he was well and truly awake, most made him wish he would finally give up the ghost to get away from that ghost.

The last time he saw Devon in person. Eliot hung out with him and his boyfriend, grateful that his old friend had found a man who was everything he couldn’t be: someone good and stable who wouldn’t bring destruction to his life. 

That night he didn’t know would be their last, the professor went to bed and the two old friends stayed up talking.

“You could stop all this,” Devon said, enacting the ritual they conducted in every conversation. “Your term of service is up, and I don’t know any flag that would demand you to live this life.”

“You don’t want to know what can hide behind a flag,” Eliot said on cue. 

“This isn’t all you can be,” Devon said, rubbing the buzz cut. “The kid who showed off his muscles while pounding a hammer, he had hair sticking out everywhere and a whole lotta dreams. My granny liked him, too.”

“That kid is long gone, but I’m glad that his muscles impressed you enough to let the guy wearing his face come visit you from time to time.” He grinned. “I got a lot more muscles now but you chose the Keats expert over me.”

“Paul’s a good guy. I thought you liked him.”

“I do. I could bench-press him with one arm, but if you’ve gone off corn-fed country boys, more power to ya.”

“You are strong, El. Stronger than you give yourself credit for. It took something to leave that town and travel all around the world, and now it takes something else for you to come back to the States. Promise me you won’t stop coming back. Everyone has to belong somewhere. How else will they know what they’re escaping from?”

“Ain’t nowhere to run, Dev. I made my bed. I’ve got a lot to carry, more than I’d ever want you to know. I need you to believe I’m still a good man.”

“If you’re carrying a lot, then it’s a healthy weight. The day you lose those 21 grams, I’ll tell you.”

He smiled at Eliot’s confusion. “Some scientist at the turn of last century claimed that he discovered the weight of the soul. You supposedly lose 21 grams after death, and he thought that was the soul leaving the body. Better to carry the weight of the world than to fly off into the unbearable lightness of being.” He smiled at their private joke.

Eliot swore at the reference to Milan Kundera, one of Devon’s favorite authors. 

“That damn book. You ruined the Czech Republic for me, and Prague is a beautiful city, knowing that it’s responsible for creating the writer you wouldn’t shut up about your entire sophomore year,” he said fondly. He once found a signed first edition of _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_ in Indonesia of all places. He carried it around in a Ziploc bag for two weeks during the monsoon season until he finished a job and could send it home with a fellow PMC heading back stateside.

Devon moaned. “When a guy showed up saying he had something to put in Devon’s hands, and his hands only, I thought for sure they were sending me your flag after you died. I stood there staring at that book, not understanding what it was, for so long that your friend looked like he was ready to catch me from a dead faint.”

“Ernie might not have minded that, but I told him you were off limits,” Eliot rejoined. “And if I was still doing something they hand out flags for, I would make sure they sent it to you.” He caught the look in his friend’s eyes. Eliot reached out for Devon's hand and kissed it. “Don’t worry about me none, darlin’. This soldier’s too mean to die.”

After Devon was gone, Eliot retraced his thoughts from all those years of occasional visits and care packages sent with odd finds from markets around the world. 

He didn’t think he ever made the decision to not be with the man whose constant affection was the only good thing in his life. Eliot never felt like he would be enough for the stable man with a gift for animals and living. Or maybe he never felt like that life would be enough for himself. In his dark moments, he wondered if the ruination he would surely have brought to the man he kept sacrosanct from all his failures would have been so bad. Could it have been much worse than the Devon received at the hands of the professor of literature? That smiling bastard killed a beautiful soul in a way Eliot could never condone: without caring enough to have the intent.

Maybe that was the worst out of all the decisions Eliot didn’t make. At some point, he’d become just like what he hated in his dad: an artist of inertia. 

During his next session, the therapist said she still couldn’t sign off on his surgery. “Reconstructive procedures can’t help someone escape from themselves. And they’re not meant as a penance, either.”

“What do you want from me? I told you a bunch of shit I never even told myself, and now you think I’m not capable of being my own health proxy?”

“Eliot, let’s talk about this.” He grunted in frustration. “How much of this has to do with growing up bi in a small town?”

“I don’t do labels. I like who I like.”

“Technically, that’s called—”

“I don’t do labels,” he gritted out. The therapist’s condescension was enraging. “I didn’t sell my soul protecting the goddamn Constitution to turn right around and submit to someone else’s belief system and use their terminology. I’m sure that’s covered in the First Amendment somehow.” He glowered at the woman through his bandages. “Doesn’t make me afraid of other people or myself. It’s just me.”

“Still, growing up with few role models—”

He barked out a laugh. “I can tell by your accent that you’re from the Northeast. New Jersey?” She nodded. “You may know the scene in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill in the 21st century, but you are obviously not familiar with the phenomenon of the small-town gay.” 

It always annoyed him when people who were younger or from urban backgrounds, who’d grown up in a place and time where people quickly established where they fell on various spectrums, simply couldn’t believe that some tobacco-chewing redneck could be gay.

“In my hometown, things went on like they do everywhere. Nothing like religious fundamentalism to encourage non-procreative sex. Vacation Bible Study, that’s all I’m sayin.’”

“I’m not sure that’s the healthy self-expression I had in mind.”

“How about this? Earl who ran the gas station was a known cross-dresser. Not that old Earl had an easy time of it, which was why there were plenty more people who were expert at living on the down-low.” He smiled. “As Devon put it in military terms, ‘There is a carefully maintained détente that allows people to coexist in small towns where everyone knows each other.’”

“All that subterfuge sounds tiring,” she observed.

“Maybe, but it’s probably what’s kept me alive,” he reflected. “Some of the best operatives I ever met came from their country’s version of Podunk, Iowa. You’ve got security clearance. Bet you’ve treated quite a few.” She made a noncommittal gesture. “There’s no bigger incentive for hiding things than growing up in a place where letting a secret get out means having to live with everyone knowing your business forever. Small communities are a breeding ground for spies, if you ask me. Plus, no one thinks a hayseed from the hills of Appalachia or Afghanistan is smart enough to be a threat.”

“So your father didn’t know the details of your relationship with Devon?”

“Wasn’t a relationship. If he’d known, I would’ve been out on the street for sure, but only after they did a laying of hands at Bethany Baptist.” He grinned. “Though rumor had it the minister might have been laying his hands in a few places not strictly sanctioned by the Book of Leviticus.”

“I’m supposed to make sure that you will be happy with the surgical results. You’ve not said anything positive about any of the mockups.”

He mustered up his courage. “That face?” He pointed at the one from his dreams. “It scares me. But it’s the one looking out from inside all the others. I’m tired of running from it.”

“What draws you to this one?” the doctor asked. 

He’d talked more in the last few weeks than he had in the rest of his life put together. Eliot wanted to get it all out on the table and be done with it. He considered the best way to say it. How he would explain it to Devon.

He didn't work the art circuit much, but as a retrieval specialist he did move some of the greats. And Eliot had slept with enough art thieves, artists, and art historians to have picked up a few things. The key to understanding art was to accept that no one else knows any more than you do. You look and you let it change you. Then whatever you say is the truth.

He pointed at his old face. “Toulouse-Latrec. A body holding back the mind. The art of being the outsider looking in. Hard living elevated to look like a virtue.”

He indicated his current face. “Picasso. And not the Blue Period, either. Cubism, best-case scenario.”

Then he held up the new face. “Modigliani. Careful strokes giving form to something not quite real. Economy. Austerity. Grace.” He paused, then added, "Panned by the critics of his time."

He had his first facial surgery three days later.

Those three days, he asked himself again and again whether this was just going to be another one of those things he would regret for the rest of his life. Eliot carried a printout of his new face in his pocket and took it out every few minutes to look at it, but he never felt anything other than a thrill that might be hope.

After everything he’d done, it seemed too good to be true. He could be that. A man with a stained soul and a thousand scars on his flesh turning a new face to the world. A stem given up for dead unfurling a fresh petal. Eliot didn’t deserve it. But good and bad were long gone, and he wasn’t above cheating justice. 

It ended up hurting worse and taking longer than he could have imagined. It hurt so much with a detailed, personal kind of pain that he started to think he might deserve that face after all. One big procedure, and then another, and then many small ones. He wanted to scream at how slow it all was.

When the last bandages came off, Eliot asked to be alone before looking in the mirror.

He spent a long time looking. Then he went for a walk on the hospital grounds, his first time outside in months. It felt strange, being outside, and even stranger to not have people avert their eyes from his covered face. Trying out his new self was almost anticlimactic. The world didn’t tilt on its axis. 

He caught a balloon that someone was bringing to a patient when it floated out of their hands, and handed it to its owner.

“Thank you,” the worried-looking woman said and rushed through the doors.

He walked through the people sitting out to get fresh air, some with wheelchairs or crutches. He turned his face up to feel the sun. His hair, the curls long enough to cover the shorter section over the surgical scar, lifted in a sudden breeze.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” a male nurse said while he had his smoke break.

“It’s beautiful,” he agreed. 

“I haven’t seen you here before,” the nurse continued. “Are you visiting someone?”

“Paying my last respects, actually.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the man said.

“Don’t be,” he said with a smile, the first one in months with a fluid mouth unfettered by bandages and wires. “It was time.”

“How are you, Eliot?” the therapist asked in the next session.

The silence stretched for so long she looked anxious. “I was so sure you’d made the right decision. Did I pressure you? Are you going to have more surgery?” She leaned forward. “Eliot, talk to me.”

Their eyes held hers steadily. “I guess I should thank you, Doc, for everything. But the truth is, I’m tired of all these words. I learned to live without them, and you can’t change who you’ve become. Maybe I learned that here. Maybe I knew it once and forgot it.” The therapist opened her mouth but they continued, “I’ve got things to do. Not sure what, exactly, but I know it’s out there and not in here.” Then they said with finality, “And it’s El now.”

She signed the discharge papers. They left that afternoon.


	6. Chapter 6

Johnny Cash had long finished his Indian ballads. The turntable had flipped through its entire stack while El talked and the apartment was silent.

“El,” Alec finally said. “I don’t know what to say. You’ve been through nine kinds of hell in your life,” he saw the raised eyebrow, “And maybe some of them were your own making, but getting here—” he shook his head. “I wouldn’t wish that process, and not just the surgeries, on anyone.”

“Can’t have been that bad. I’m still here, ain’t I?” 

“Yeah, you are. And so am I.” Alec let himself be looked at for a long moment. Then he reached out and brushed a long lock of hair away from El’s face. He leaned forward and kissed them.

He was afraid, at first, when the lips didn’t part. Then El was letting him in, they were letting him _in_. Alec’s heart leapt in his chest. He surged forward and caught the slight body in his arms. It fit perfectly inside his. He kissed their mouth, their face, their eyes, and was starting down their neck. 

Then he leaned back. “Is this all right? I don’t want to, I mean, if it’s too soon, or if you know, you don’t—”

“Shut up and kiss me, Hardison.”

Alec did. He was never one to do things by halves, so he had finished kissing every bit of exposed skin and was starting to lift the tunic to reach the rest. 

A hand pressed against his chest. He sank back against the couch. “That’s cool. We can do things at your pace.”

El got up in one fluid motion and moved towards the bedroom. They stopped to swing their hair over their shoulder and look back at Hardison. “You coming?”

Hardison scrambled to his feet and lifted El up into his arms. It wasn’t a strain at all.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Alec confided as he carried them to the bedroom.

“I was sitting there for the last 15 minutes wondering if you’d get what I was thinking,” they said, pressing their lips to his from the perch in his arms. "I was hoping you'd try something just like this."

“God forbid you drop a hint and make things easier for a guy,” Alec grumbled.

El took off Alec’s clothes with sure fingers. 

“Explore,” El commanded softly. 

Wearing only his skin, Alec moved closer and lifted the tunic up over their head. El lay back and let their trousers get pulled off. Once there was nothing in between them, Alec slid his body against the one next to him in the bed. His big hands began to map this new body that no one had touched like this, he was sure of it.

There was nothing in his previous experience to prepare him for how to meet this other person. There were no rules, no precedents, because there was only one El. Alec touched each sector of flesh tentatively, learning what brought shocks of pleasure, what made them stretch their arms out and draw him closer, what made them gasp in surprise.

There were henna tattoos all over, another layer added to the tapestry of scars, leading him through a labyrinth, curling around contours and beckoning him to look closer, to get lost, to find. Because this was an entirely new landscape, every roundness, every divot, every surface was a surprise, had its own secret logic to reveal. 

Alec’s fingers, his mouth, his everything confided what had been in his heart for so long, spoken with a new note of wonder at all the things he could never have predicted. 

El flowed between his hands. That was what their body had been designed for, he thought, to move between things, to escape from solidity and swim around him, through him, in him. 

Alec covered them with his body, gathering them to him. “Yes,” he breathed into their hair. “Like this." Next time would be another way, and then another. His lips pressed a promise of untold new configurations to El's mouth.

El arched up, throwing their head back. Alec caught them and cried out. 

They lay back together, panting.

“Oh my God,” Hardison said, his eyes wide. 

El placed a finger to his lips. 

They got ready for bed. El turned off the light and Alec folded his body around them. He lay there until he felt them relax into sleep. He savored everything: El trusting him enough to let their guard down, letting him see all of those new reactions on their face when he touched them, letting him discover them as they were at that moment, and leaving the door open for many future explorations.

“Mama, I wish we could share this,” he whispered to Parker’s memory. “I’ll love them enough for the both of us.”

It took a while for his mind to calm down. Going to sleep required a complex process of turning off his mental machinery. And Alec had a lot of things to think about. 

What he had with Parker was perfect. Any comparisons would be disrespectful to her, and to El. It was different, that’s all. 

He lay there with that fascinating person in his arms and didn’t want to go to sleep. He could tell that something big was happening and he let it. His mind, his entire ticking, wriggling brain, was completely engaged by the prospect of getting to know El. 

If he’d loved Eliot Spencer before, he’d have to find a new word for what he was just beginning to feel about El after knowing them for all of a few hours.

He shed a tear, just one, at how lucky he was. Only one day ago, he thought his life was over. Now something completely unexpected was happening.

Everything was new, and that was a rare delight for his mind. It would be a science and a hack and a thousand other things he’d never imagined, being with El, discovering who they were and who he was and what shapes the two of them could make together.

He figured they’d have to create a lot of new words. 

Alec finally fell asleep, words swimming like tadpoles through his head.

The next morning, he awoke to the smell of coffee and something delicious. 

He wandered into the kitchen. El was standing before the stove, their hair wound into a bun, an apron wrapped around their low-slung, ancient pair of jeans and an oxford shirt.

“You’re eatin’ healthy if you stick around,” they admonished “It won’t kill ya.”

El stepped away from the sizzling pan for a moment to set a mug of coffee, a spoon, and a canister of sugar in front of Hardison. They watched the spoon travel back and forth with portions of sugar and shook their head. 

In a few minutes, the plates were set on the table. 

Alec took one mouthful and leaned back. “Mmph eh uh?” he mumbled around the food.

“Tofu scramble and vegetable home fries. You must have been eating worse than you said. It’s just breakfast.”

He moaned and shoveled in more food. “If you’re teaching those kids to cook half as good as this, the world don’t deserve it.” He took another bite and then laid down his fork. “But maybe I do, for putting up with your annoying ass driving me to distraction for years. Heaven forfend that you should open that mouth and tell me you like me. It would have been so easy. ‘By the way, Hardison, I wouldn’t mind if you took me to bed.’ ‘Oh really? You mean you’d let me—‘”

El kissed him senseless for a good five minutes. “I may do things differently than other people, maybe I do them in my own sweet time, but I get them done.” They ran a hand down Hardison’s back and he shivered. “Tell me I don’t.”

"You do. You do. I’m not arguin’. Now let me finish my fine breakfast.”

Hardison ate up every bit of food before he let himself be taken back to bed.


	7. Chapter 7

Hardison left when he couldn’t put off tending to Leverage any longer. He went back to work with a new joy in everything that he did.

That first morning, he wanted to ask which of them was going to move in with the other, but he kept his mouth shut. Plenty of time for that. 

In the meantime, being in a long-distance relationship was better than he could have imagined. It took some doing, but now he could get El talking. They talked for hours over FaceTime sometimes, Alec learning pieces of El’s past and hearing about all the things they were involved in. El was unexpectedly witty via text, when they could get a moment away from all their jobs.

He was thrilled that El was trying so many new things. No problem, Alec would move to Chapel Hill. His work was largely online. He could have an office anywhere. 

But El was very supportive of his work, too. They were much more attentive than before about the technical side and asked intelligent questions about the parts of the cons Alec shared. They had an unspoken agreement that plausible deniability would keep their lives in balance.

Alec went to North Carolina every two or three weeks. He could be patient. When that first Monday morning, El brought him to the community center and sat him down to do a tasting of the students’ food, that was all the confirmation Hardison needed to be sure that it would all work out. 

The kids placed their dishes before him and stood back in an even line, hands behind their backs, waiting for the verdict. They were all a little stiff, and Hardison could tell it wasn’t only because their food was about to be critiqued.

“El, my God, you make these kids stand at attention like you’re still a drill sergeant in the service.” He looked around at the students. “Lemme tell ya something. El over there, they may give you a lot of sass and fix those blue eyes on you till your blood stops in your veins, but at heart, they’re completely harmless.”

He reached over and pulled El down on his lap to kiss them. “Ain’t that right, El?”

Blushing furiously, El wriggled free and leapt back. “Tell him what the rule is,” they commanded the students, who were staring at each other with wide eyes.

“Chef says that anyone who engages in inappropriate touching in the kitchen gets to mop the floor,” they said in unison.

“Rules are rules,” El stated.

Alec sampled all of the dishes, which were predictably amazing. Then he took the bucket and mop set before him and got to work, grumbling.

About a year later, Alec was standing in the community center kitchen chopping celery. One of Chef's edicts was that anyone in the kitchen had to work. Though the kids in the program were now friendly with him, he didn’t want to endure the array of death glares directed at him if he dared break one of Chef’s rules.

“C’mon, El. Just a few days in Portland. Share some of your new recipes with the staff at the brew pub, put the fear of the Lord in them to keep them in line for a while. Leverage international needs someone with your international experience, and to be honest, I’m not sure our consultants really speak some of the languages they claim to.”

“Nah, Hardison. I got stuff to do here.” El was indeed frying something, boiling something else, chopping three kinds of vegetables and hollering at all the students in the vicinity, demonstrating their classic skill of seeing with the back of their head. 

Hardison laid down his knife in exasperation. “I come see you. Hell, you roped me into updating your sorry-ass network at the center. You’ve said yourself that all the staff here know what they’re doing. The director is great, and she’s not allergic to paperwork like some people.”

“You—finish these potatoes. You, watch the soup.” El handed off their tasks to various students and dragged Hardison into the back. 

“I didn’t want anyone to know, but since you’re being so damn insistent.” El took a deep breath. “I’m involved with a study being conducted by someone from the treatment center. Some vets with PTSD, the bad kind, come here for martial arts classes. Knowing a little about it, I created some exercises specially designed for them, things that would help them deal with anxiety, make them feel stronger, but not trigger them.” 

El looked like they were spitting up a brick. “There’s going to be a paper for an academic journal.” 

Alec was speechless. 

“And alright, I might be sort of co-authoring it. Pick your jaw up off the floor! See, this is why I didn’t tell you.”

El made to storm off, but Alec held them back.

“I’m not surprised that you’re capable of writing a paper, dumbass. If you weren’t smart, why would I hang out with you? I can’t believe that you would keep this from me.” Alec was genuinely hurt. “You don’t have to hide anything from me, El.”

“It just sort of happened. I found out all the dumb things they were doing for the vets in the name of helping them, and it pissed me off. One thing led to another, and my ideas of the right way to do things started getting passed through channels.” They smiled. “Vets are welcome to attend martial arts or to volunteer. Good for them and the kids to be around somebody not exactly like ‘em from time to time. Plus, these people are good with their hands, and this old place needs a lot of renovation.”

Alec reached out and pulled El’s braid. “You’ve got a lot going on, I get it. I’m not trying to stand in your way. Leverage and the pub can do without you for a while longer, but I’d love to have you in my space sometime.” 

El made a noncommittal noise. 

“Will you let me read the paper when it comes out?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I guess. I wouldn’t have volunteered but they’re always putting things the wrong way and this researcher doesn’t know the first thing about martial arts.”

Hardison pulled El to him. “You may not know this, but authors of academic papers get me all hot.” And he kissed them but good. 

“I’m telling, Chef. Anyone caught making out in the kitchen scrubs pots for a week, you said.” 

They pulled apart to let the student grab a spice container from the top shelf.

The blue eyes narrowed, and Alec suppressed a shiver. “Try it. Keep mouthing off and see what Chef’ll give you,” El said in their scariest voice. 

The kid scurried off and they both chuckled. 

“I could watch that all day,” Alec said in a throaty voice. “Take me to bed.”

“Dammit, Hardison, I gotta set an example here.” Their face softened under the barrage of seductive looks coming from Alec. “Alright. Meet you at the apartment in 30.”

The next time Hardison came to visit, they were lying in bed when he suggested taking a vacation. 

“Not a good time, Alec.”

“But you said the paper is under review and you’ve trained some other people on your techniques,” Hardison protested. “We can go wherever you like, but I’m hoping to make a stop or two for work. Nothing majorly shady. You could look over some of the hitters we’ve got. See them in action, critique their form. All from the safety of video.”

It meant more to Alec than he wanted to admit, the idea of working together again. He missed it. Leverage was something they could share, as opposed to him dropping in on El’s life. Even though he was fully accepted as a member of the community center by now, it wasn’t their thing.

“The thing is, I’m basically on my last alias,” El said. “This identity has to last me. You gotta understand why I can’t risk burning this name by getting involved with something illegal.” 

“But I would never—”

“And it’s, well, El hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“You’re El!” Alec exclaimed, the way they used to tell Parker she and Alice were the same person. “What is this shit?”

“’Sides, I’ve got stuff to do,” El mumbled vaguely.

Alec made a frustrated noise. “Stuff that’s more important than me?”

“Alright already! I’m sort of participating in these language conversation groups at the university. It’s not like I planned it. I was out for coffee with someone from the center, and overheard some students and their teacher having a study group. They were butchering the hell out of the Zulu language. I made some comment to the person I was with, wondering where they fell off a Peace Corps truck, and the teacher heard it I guess.” 

Their face was all red. “And then me and the linguistics professor, we got to talking. They found out I’d been around some tribal dialects in various places. A lot of the phrases I know best were things not fit to share with the class, but I did spend time in some remote places these academics don’t tend to get to.” 

They scowled at Alec’s expression. “It’s not a big deal! It’s only sitting in from time to time and telling them when they’re saying things wrong.” They broke off, mumbling, “I ain’t teachin’ the class.” Alec stared at him. “I ain’t!”

Then they added in a whisper, “The International Affairs department heard about me and asked me to give some lectures, but I signed a bunch of papers when they admitted me to the treatment center. It would be too hard to avoid talking about things I agreed not to mention.”

“What’s next?” Alec exploded. “You’re in the checkout line at the grocery store, hear a city council member talking about some policy you don’t agree with, and then you stumble into running for office because they’re not doing it right?”

El looked at him blankly.

“You can choose things you know! You don’t have to wander by and then fall into doing something with the excuse that someone else isn’t doing it right!”

Alec sat there, panting, the words out at last. “Whether you admit it or not, you’ve made a lot of choices in your life,” they snorted, “Good choices. Everything I’ve watched you do recently has been generous and smart.” Alec took their chin in his hand. “Baby, promise me, just once in your life, make a decision and feel good about it.”

El’s response floored him. Where he was expecting more excuses or at least a half-assed joke, if not a downright change of subject, he heard something completely unexpected.

“I’m trying, Alec. I’ve still got some time to learn how.”

Alec froze. “What.”

El sat up and faced him. “Everything I told you about the network that found me in the hospital was basically true.” They seemed to have difficulty meeting the eyes staring at their face. “I’ve known people in that exact situation, in possession of so many state secrets that the government will give them any healthcare in their power. Except usually, they are the ones contacting the government. 

“I’m definitely that class of person. I could ask for whatever I want. But see, I’m also classified as something else. They do keep track of people like me, and when a flag goes up with their test results, the government is contacted.”

“Test results.” 

“There’s something that shows up when you do anything more in-depth than a standard blood panel. It’s one of the reasons I don’t do hospitals.” They noted the rage beginning to gather on Alec’s face. “Not the only reason! I fucking hate being a patient, and people could take me out while I’m down.

“So anyway, I’ve known for a while that there’s something different about my blood. I’m not the only service member who was exposed to chemical agents. They’ve found that this one can do several things, among them,” they swallowed, “Kidney disease.”

“What stage are you?” Alec asked quietly. El had the grace to look frightened at his voice.

“Stage three.” 

Alec flung himself out of bed and shrank away from El. 

“All stage three means is that you have some kidney damage. Lots of people have it for years, and for the rest of their lives they don’t have any symptoms and nothing ever happens. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and this will never mean anything.”

“How long have you known this?”

“I found out I was stage three while in the treatment center. They told me exactly what I just told you, and then I did a bunch of research to make sure it was the truth.” They stood up and faced Alec. “I went on a vegan diet. That’s the best preventive measure there is.”

“You weren’t running around, doing ten things at once, until recently.” El bit their lip. “What happened?”

“My test results were steady. And then I had one test that was a little worse. Just a little!” Alec was trembling. “Calm down. I may stay right where I am forever. It’s no—”

“God almighty,” Alec murmured. “I ain’t even mad. You honestly, absolutely, literally cannot help it.”

“Help what? People get sick, Alec. I didn’t even do this to myself. We can march right down to the VA and find ten other people with the same marker in their blood, and chances are all of ‘em are physically fine.”

El finally agreed to taking a vacation. El chose the itinerary—spots they’d visited in different parts of Asia and Europe. They knew lots of off-the-beaten-path locations, each of them beautiful and interesting in a way that was personal to El. 

Alec couldn’t help but notice that Leverage International didn’t have a case anywhere near their destinations, but he didn’t mind. This was another side of El he’d never thought he’d be invited into. He watched them order in the native language at every restaurant, introducing him to cuisine they termed “the real deal” wherever they went. 

He had it bad before, but on that trip he lost the rest of himself to a love that short-circuited his brain. 

That must’ve been it. He knew better.

They were lying in bed in Prague. The sky was turning gold with the sunset. He was tracing his fingers lightly through the hair curling over El’s shoulders and it just came out.

“Marry me.”

The words resounded in the hotel room.

“Please, El. Give this to me. I never ask for anything. I won’t make you move. We don’t have to see each other more often. But the words are screaming in my brain every time I see you. I have to ask you. Marry me.”

El had gone very still.

“Make a choice, El. For once. Choose me.”

“I can’t, Alec,” they said after a long moment.

“Can’t or won’t?” Their apologetic manner was getting Alec upset. It made him want to stomp on all the boundaries El threw up every time he tried to get closer.

“It wouldn’t be right. Please don’t ask me why.”

“God forbid I ever ask you anything! The thing is, I ain’t stupid. El. I don’t need you to say anything. I know the score.”

“Don’t,” El said in a quiet voice.

“Don’t make me say it.” Alec was boiling inside.

“Don’t do it,” came the quiet voice that would paralyze the tongue of any thinking human being. “If you so much as open your mouth, I’m out the door.” The blue eyes bored into his. “So help me, I ain’t playin’, Alec.”

The moment was suspended in time and space.

And Alec simply couldn’t help himself. His big mouth always got him into trouble, and sometimes he just had to push things a little farther.

His face scarcely moved. The first letter of that single word hadn’t even formed on his lips. But the movement of his tongue inside his mouth as it reached for his teeth disturbed some current in the air. The idea flared in his eyes and El saw it, just like they could see the fatal misstep of an opponent slowed down into frames per second and do nothing but watch as the other person's own weight took them down. 

El got up. They very deliberately got dressed, threw a few things in a bag, and left without a word.

Alec lay there in the bed until long after dark, sinking into the ruins of the afternoon, the trip, and his hopes.

Then he sprang up. All deference to El’s privacy crumbled. He grabbed his laptop and tried to track their movements. 

The GPS on El’s phone beeped. He fished it out from under the covers and cursed.

Alec spent the next two days in Prague. He couldn't look away from the proof that El had never let him in and never would.

El didn’t take a commercial flight. Of course not. 

His ex-lover proved that they hadn’t forgotten any of their tricks. They didn’t appear in any surveillance footage after a couple of blocks. No lines of credit pinged. No one, anywhere, had seen them. 

They had to be heading towards a military transport. Whether it was nearby or three countries away, El would find their way home in some way that Hardison wouldn’t be able to pinpoint. Even their escape route was beyond his reach.

Finally, he shut his laptop, recognizing defeat. El had exploded his entire life and walked away without a scratch. But despite all their apparent transformations, El remained the same. 

In that moment, he knew what hatred was. Alec Hardison had never hated anyone or anything before. And if it were about him, he wouldn’t have reached that point. But in his mind, he stood, towering over an infinite dark chasm, and he could see every layer all the way down. 

The entire vista pieced itself together in his mind the way problems did sometimes. He saw every detail of an intricate puzzle while at the same time he saw the whole big picture. 

The enormity of his hatred frightened him. 

In his mind, he took a deliberate step away from that hole. That way lay madness. He had never really considered that it was possible to lose his mind, but for a second, he saw that it would take only a step in one direction. He wouldn’t let it happen.

But he was only human. He allowed himself one moment of revolt, one statement summing up his holy outrage. 

“God bless the U S of A.”

Alec didn’t know if he was welcome to call El after that, but he didn’t care to find out. 

For six months, he did his best to start over. Getting only part of the person he loved wasn’t fair to himself. El had done everything to keep them at arm’s length, and they’d been very clear that no promises would ever be offered. 

Their first morning together, El had stated that they were on PrEP for the long term, and that if they were to continue being intimate, Alec would have to go on it as well. That was their way of making clear that there was no promise or expectation of exclusivity, Alec knew. It was also a handy way to shut down any conversation about El’s habits or his for good. 

Of course, Hardison being Hardison, he tried to figure out if El was seeing anyone else. Not that he wanted to stop them or interfere. It simply killed him that there were all these parts of them that El wouldn’t let him into. 

Alec never found out anything for sure, and he hated himself for trying.

As an act of rebellion, he tried to date other people when the confines of their relationship became too much. But there was just no way. El had blown his mind, body, and soul, everything he ever knew or expected, and no one else could come close.

He tried with everything he had, but Alec couldn’t do anything halfway. He loved them. 

After the fatal marriage proposal, however, he did see someone for a while. One of the contractors that occasionally worked at Leverage asked him to dinner. She was funny, and smart, and a great conversationalist.

He sat there, food forgotten, listening to some story about a date gone wrong. The guy was some kind of bigot and didn’t realize she was multiracial. The skilled thief who’d helped out on several tricky cons lifted the man’s wallet as they said good night. That week, he got a thank you letter from the NAACP, notifying him that they were grateful for his generous donation, and that his photo would be displayed on their website and social media accounts to show their thanks.

Alec was gripping his fork so hard it was digging into his hand, but the tears started flowing. Once the dam broke, he couldn’t stop them.

“Alec, Alec what is it?” she asked, reaching for his hand.

“You told me something about yourself, something personal, and I didn’t have to drag it out of you,” he babbled. “It’s, I mean—”

“Sssh,” she said, throwing money on the table. 

She led him out to the car and sat him in the seat. Then she got in and put her arms around him. “It’s okay. You can say whatever you need to get off your chest. We don’t have to do anything,” his shoulders tensed, “But I can’t say I wouldn’t be disappointed if you say no when I ask if I can take you home and tuck you in.”

He was bawling too hard to do anything but nod. 

They were together for those six months, and it was good. Alec Hardison didn’t do anything halfway, and he had a lot of himself he’d been dying to give.

Then he got a phone call. He got thirty phone calls. They kept coming until he created a voice mail message to stave them off.

_Hello, this is Alec Hardison. Yes, I heard. I’m working on it. If you know anyone who wants to donate a kidney, leave their contact information after the beep._

Nothing was beyond Alec’s reach. Within 24 hours, he’d hacked into the national kidney registry; set up online portals for people to share their contact information, blood type, and other markers indicating a possible match; and gotten contacts on four continents doing the same thing.

He was through with tiptoeing around El’s privacy. He called them up the next day and told them so.

“My phone’s been ringing off the damn hook, so don’t even try to sugarcoat it. All your friends gave me the lowdown. How long did they give you?”

A growl sounded through the phone. “What friends? What did they say?”

“All the people who care about you, fool. There were so many of them from all over asking me to save you from your eternal pigheaded self-reliance that I had to set up a hotline with messages in several languages.”

“It ain’t right to skip the line, Alec. Every other person waiting on a kidney deserves a chance. More than I—”

Alec screamed. He didn’t hold back. Why stand on ceremony at this late date? He screamed so loud and so long that people from the brew pub ran up the stairs and started banging on the door asking him if they needed to call 911.

“I can’t with you, El. I just can’t anymore.”

“Nobody’s asking you to do anything,” El snapped. 

“Listen to me, and listen to me well,” he said in a voice that scared him as it came out of his mouth. “I am going to find you a compatible kidney. You will have it transplanted into that body of yours without,” And then he gnashed the words separately, “One. Single. Word. Of. Complaint. And if while they’re doing it, they discover the thing inside you that makes you incapable of accepting help, thinking you deserve anything but shit from life, or letting anyone motherfucking love you, then tell them to send me the report. I’ll write my own damn academic paper about it. Don’t worry, I’ll list you as co-author.” He came up for air. “You’re welcome.” 

And he threw his phone across the room.

He found a kidney for El. He found kidneys for several people while he was at it. Add “doing the Kidney Registry’s job better than they do” to his list of skills.

He showed up at the hospital before the surgery.

“I’m sorry, Alec,” El said, looking small and vulnerable in the bed. All the people who were checking in on El, then dragging them off to dialysis, and finally waiting by their bedside had told him that El had begged them not to let Alec see them like that. These people asked Alec to come anyway, but he refused. He could accept El for who they were, and he’d never force anything on them again. 

“You didn’t ask them to send for me, but you casually let it drop that you wouldn’t turn me away, so I dropped everything at that scintillating invitation and got on a plane,” Alec said drily, taking their hand.

“I tried, Alec. You don’t know how hard I tried. I just couldn’t.” El was crying. “I wanted to. You need to know how much I did. It just wouldn’t’ve been right.”

“Ssh. It’s ok, baby.” Alec settled their braid over their shoulder. “I’m here. I’ll stay while the surgery goes on, and then I’ll wait and see if you want to see me afterwards. If you don’t, I’ll be gone. No explanations necessary.”

El wept. “I hate myself. I hate that I’ve made you like this. You deserve better than this, Alec. I tried to keep you from getting hurt, but I wasn’t strong enough to break it off with you.”

“Honey, you’re plenty strong. That will of yours could break me in half.” He caressed their face. “You can hate yourself all you want. I’d never try and change you. Point me at anyone who tries and I’ll ruin their life.” They smiled at each other. 

“El, everything’s gonna be fine. But you have to know. I love you enough for me, and you, and about 10 other people. It’s not about deserving. It just is. Like it or not.”

The person in the bed hiccuped and nodded.

“I can live with that,” they said. 

Alec held their hand as they were wheeled off to surgery. He sat in the waiting room with the donor’s family. It so happened that one of the people Leverage helped along the way was a match. They’d sort of saved the person’s life and returned their life savings. It made things easier for El that way, but the man made it clear that they were already on a donor list after a relative searched for a match and didn’t find one. They wouldn’t accept any payment, but Alec set up scholarship fund for his kids, his nieces and nephews, and anyone else within six degrees of separation.

The surgery was a success. When El woke up, Alec was there holding their hand.

“Hey baby,” he said. “Welcome back.”

“Hey.”

The talked for a little while about nothing and everything, the way lovers do.

When El looked tired, Alec got up. 

“See you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow, darlin,’” El said in their sweetest drawl.

He got the call that night. The sound of the phone knifed something deep inside that was just beginning to stir with life. 

“They were fine and then their heart stopped beating. The doctors didn’t have any other explanation,” one of El’s friends said. “It was too much strain and their body couldn’t take it.”

A silence stretched on.

“Alec. Alec come down to the hospital. They left you a note.”

Alec hung up the phone and ran to the bathroom to vomit.

Then he drove to the hospital like a zombie. 

The note was exactly what he expected. In precise language, it named Alec the executor of El’s estate. It listed the places where all of their account numbers and access codes could be found, the charities that were to receive the money, and then the arrangements for their remains.

“Please scatter my ashes—”

Alec folded up the note and put it in his pocket. He didn’t need to read the rest to know what it said. He’d read the apology at the end sometime when it was all taken care of.

El’s friends were surprised when Alec told them that he was sending their body home to Colorado. 

“I didn’t think they had any strong feelings about that place,” one of them said. “They liked the outdoors, sure, but I thought they wanted their ashes scattered somewhere close by so that people who wanted to be there could come.”

“Sounds like something El might say, but I saw their last wishes clear as day. You wanna see the letter?” Alec moved to draw it out of his pocket.

“No, of course not. We’re organizing a wake. Please come.”

Alec promised to stop by, but he had things to do first. 

It wasn’t hard to do. Alec located the grave in no time. He found the closest plot and then arranged for one headstone, and then the addition to the other.

To the stone saying “Devon McElroy,” had been added “Beloved Husband.”

Then he saw the other stone placed in the nearby plot. Though El never uttered Devon’s last name, he knew without any research that it was the same one that El chose for their new last name.

“El McElroy,” it read. “Beloved Spouse.” 

“Are you sure this is facing the right way?” one groundskeeper asked another, looking at their instructions once more. 

The most difficult thing had been to get the cemetery to place El’s grave facing the opposite way so that their headstone and Devon’s were facing each other.

“Who are you to decide which is the right way?” Alec snapped. “That’s the way it’s supposed to go.”

The men finished their work, grumbling. Finally, they left.

Alec stepped between the stones. As he’d hoped, each of the inscriptions was clearly in the sight lines of the other. 

On El’s stone, there was one quote from _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_ :

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”

On Devon’s he’d added the other,

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”

Alec placed flowers on the graves and paused. 

“Take that, America.”

He left them to their eternity, with a promise to visit.


End file.
